Stranger in a Stage Land:

A case for the role of Science-fiction in Theatre

Stephen B. Platt

This dissertation is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Murdoch University, Perth, 2020.

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I declare that this dissertation is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not been previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution.

______Stephen B. Platt

iii iv Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the contributions of the following people for their impact upon and assistance with my work on this project:

To Dr. Melissa Merchant – It was you who put the idea of post-graduate study into my head, so technically this is all your fault. Thank you.

To Prof. Jenny De Reuck and Dr. David Moody – You taught me a lot as an undergraduate and as an Honours student. I was and am still thrilled that you agreed to supervise the beginning of this project and you have remained stalwart supporters of both it and of me ever since.

To Dr. Kathryn Trees – You came on board to supervise more than two years into this project and helped get it over the line. I have learnt a lot from you about writing, reading, and analysing academically, as well as the fun one can have doing it.

To Mary, Jules, Herbert, Sydney, Gene, Gerry, Verity, Jeff, George, Steven, Terry, Rob, Douglas, Doug, and Rebecca – thank you for the inspirations.

To the friends who I met at Murdoch – there are hundreds of you who I have had the pleasure to meet in my time at the University, and I feel very lucky to still call you friends. Thank you for the support and friendship.

To the cast and crew of @lantis – thank you for taking part in the adventure. It was no small undertaking, but you all helped me realise a long held creative ambition of mine and I am extremely grateful.

To Mum, Dad, Rebecca, Michael, and Charlie – Thank you for always supporting my endeavours; no matter how obscure, difficult, time-consuming, or just plain weird they are.

To Joy, Malcolm, Brodie, Alysha, Emily, and Flynn – your support, in ways both big and small, is all appreciated.

To Gibson the Dog – you were born the month I started my university studies back in 2007, and you have been a consistent study companion throughout it all. Thank you for being a good boy.

To Dr. Sarah Courtis – Thank you for leading the way and for being the best friend I could have hoped for on this academic journey.

And finally, to my wife Dr. Ellin Sears – Thank you for love, support, advice, and care you gave to me throughout my studies whilst completing your own. I am looking forward to today in tomorrow’s clothes.

1 2 Abstract

Science fiction is one of the most popular genres across the major entertainment mediums, except theatre. Despite science fiction plays existing for almost as long as there has been science fiction literature, the genre has failed to flourish on stage as it has done in the mediums of cinema, literature, television, and interactive entertainment like video games. Theatre in the twenty-first century has shown encouraging signs of growth and development for science fiction stage shows, and live performance spaces, practitioners, and production companies have the potential to breed the next great works of the genre. Academia relating specifically to science fiction theatre is also an emerging practice. Ralph Willingham’s Science Fiction and the theatre (1994) remains amongst the most comprehensive compendiums of the genre’s stage history, but a number of contemporary researchers and academics are beginning to examine the practice of science fiction theatre in greater detail. By considering the work of academics on science fiction and the history of the genre, both on and off the stage, I show that science fiction and the theatre possess many benefits for one another when combined in practice. My research uses a multi-modal approach, drawing upon the theories of Practice as Research, Audience Reception theory, and the Iterative Cyclical Web, to demonstrate how practitioners can develop science fiction texts for live performance spaces that effectively create and explore the genre’s themes, values, and stories. The exegesis explores the genealogy of science fiction in theatre and contains documentation of my creative artefact used to examine the processes of creating original science fiction for the stage; the staged radio play series @lantis. Written and directed by myself, @lantis was a two-year long project that featured the contributions of more than fifty actors, sound designers, foley artists, theatre technicians, visual artists, and musicians which culminated in seven individual episodes between sixty and ninety minutes long, performed live as a work of theatre to an audience, as well as being recorded and broadcast online as audio plays. The exegesis concludes with an analysis of data collected from surveys taken by @lantis audience members and in-depth discussions about potential areas of interest for contemporary and upcoming science fiction theatre practitioners.

3 4 Reading Order

This exegesis consists of the following components:

1. The dissertation Stranger in a Stage Land: a case for the role of Science Fiction in Theatre. 2. Appendices including the website for @lantis, the completed script for the first episode of @lantis (Episode One: Fish Out of Water), and four reviews of live performances of @lantis. 3. A Bibliography and Reference List of academic readings, articles, films, literature, stage productions, and other media cited in Stranger in a Stage Land: a case for the role of Science Fiction in Theatre. 4. The seven audio episodes of @lantis. 5. Video recording of the seven live theatrical performances of @lantis. 6. The scripts of episodes two through seven of @lantis.

The audio episodes, video recordings, and additional @lantis scripts are separate attachments from the dissertation.

Readers can approach the content presented in any order that they wish. I would advise that readers should familiarise themselves with at least one episode of @lantis before reading Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis, as that chapter discusses the production in detail. It is at the reader’s discretion how they choose to interact with @lantis; whether that be reading the script(s), listening to one or more of the audio episodes, watching one or more of the video recordings of the stage performances, or any combination thereof.

If you choose to watch the video recording of Episode Seven – It’s a Wonderful Mind, there was a technical fault when recording that resulted in there being no audio captured on camera until five minutes and twenty-six seconds in. To hear the missing dialogue, please listen to the audio version of Episode Seven. This video also concludes with a speech from myself given on stage thanking the cast and crew of @lantis. It is not part of the scripted performance. 5

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Table of Contents Contents

Acknowledgements ...... 1 Abstract ...... 3 Reading Order ...... 5 Table of Contents ...... 7 Glossary of Terms...... 9 Table of Figures, Images, and Tables ...... 13 Chapter One – Introduction ...... 15 Chapter Two – Literature Review ...... 23 Chapter Three – Methodologies ...... 47 Chapter Four – The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction ...... 69 Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis ...... 115 Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data ...... 153 Chapter Seven – Discussions and Findings ...... 171 Chapter Eight – Conclusions ...... 189 Appendices – Website for @lantis...... 197 Appendices – Script for @lantis Episode One: Fish Out of Water ...... 199 Appendices – Reviews for @lantis ...... 281 Bibliography & References ...... 289

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Glossary of Terms

The following glossary is a list of terms that I use within the exegesis.

Foley – A practice whereby sound effects are created either live or pre-recorded to be used in entertainment mediums including theatre and film. Live foley is where foley artists use a series of items to create the soundscape of the world of the text as part of the performance of theatrical work. @lantis used a combination of live foley and pre- recorded sound effects, as discussed in detail in Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis.

Immersion – The practice of allowing and assisting audiences to create a strong connection with the reality of the world of the text presented by removing and/or breaking down the barriers that inhibit this. There are elements of immersive practices across all entertainment mediums, with technology driven mediums such as the Video Game industry using it extensively. The naturalism movement in nineteenth century European theatre used realistic settings and characters to immerse the audience in the real world. The aim was to immerse the audience as fully as possible into the reality of the play. Contemporary immersive performances such as Sleep No More (2011), RAWTransport™ (2019) and Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience (2019) have achieved this goal with a combination of theatrical conventions (live actors, realistic sets, costuming, props, etc.) and technical advancements in the areas of hologrammatic projection and Virtual and Augmented Reality. Immersion is becoming a more commonplace practice in contemporary theatre, and in particular within science fiction live performance.

Interactivity – A procedure or practice whereby two or more elements of a performative space (of which one element is the audience as a collective and/or an individual audience member) are permitted and encouraged to interact, from which elements of entertainment and/or text engagement are created.

Liveness – A sensation achieved by the active or passive participation of performer and audience during live shows through which the experience of the text or work is enhanced for all participants by the live performance elements.

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Participation – The act of involvement by an audience, actively or passively, with a work of art or piece of entertainment media, or on a wider scale with the artistic practice in general.

Performance – While the term performance can be used to mean anything from the rituals, presentations and curated identities of everyday life, to the specific artistic creations of performance artists and companies, in this exegesis, a performance specifically refers to:

1.) A specific individual staging of a production. For example, episodes of @lantis were performed twice each over the 2018 season. If I want to cite an event from an individual show, such as the technical issue that occurred during one specific run of Good Night, and Good Lug (discussed in detail in Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis), I use the term ‘performance’ to indicate this. 2.) The work presented by an individual as part of a larger collaborative piece. EG: Max Rankin’s performance as Harry in @lantis was strong throughout the season of shows.

Radio Play – A text that is created primarily through the use of sound, be that talking, singing, music, pre-recorded sound effects, and/or foley work. Whilst most commonly performed in radio studios without an audience present and recorded for later consumption, Radio Plays are also performed in theatrical spaces to live audiences. In this exegesis, radio plays designed to be staged as theatre are referred to as ‘Staged Radio Plays’, and radio plays intended to be recorded and broadcast in studios and not as theatrical works are called ‘Audio Dramas.’

Theatre – An artform in which actors and/or performers present work in a space to an audience, usually a live audience in attendance within the performance space but sometimes accessing the show remotely through the use of technology. Theatre can contain, but is not limited to, acting, singing, dancing, improvisation, recitals, and music. Theatre usually, but not always, presents a narrative from a pre-written text. Whilst it is typically staged in designated performance spaces known as ‘theatres’, the act of theatre is not always confined to such spaces and can be performed in a variety of public spaces. The central research production of this exegesis, the staged radio play @lantis (2018), is a work of theatre – performed before a live audience in a theatre, featuring

10 the use of acting, singing, dancing, music, costumes, and make up – even while containing production conventions not usually associated with live performance in theatrical spaces.

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Table of Figures, Images, and Tables

Figures Figure 1 - 'Modes of Knowing: multi-mode epistemological model for PaR', (Nelson, 2013, p.37) ...... 50 Figure 2 - ‘The Iterative Cyclic Web of practice-led research and research-led practice’ (Dean & Smith, 2010, p. 20) ...... 60

Images Image 1 - Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 120 Image 2 - Murray Jackson as Prof. Jules Quine (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 122 Image 3 - Tegan Mulvany as Dr. Mary Pote (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 123 Image 4 - Max Rankin as Senior Technician Harrison 'Harry' Kinvig (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 124 Image 5 - Nic Doig as Deputy Technician Lug (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 126 Image 6 - Artwork of 'Lug' by Ally Snell, 2018...... 127 Image 7 - Xarna Rappold as IRIS (Leitch, 2018) ...... 128 Image 8 - Artwork of 'The Hybrid' by Ally Snell, 2018...... 130 Image 9 - Artwork of 'Jules, IRIS, and Mary in Ponderlust Labs' by Ally Snell, 2018.' ...... 134 Image 10 - Artwork of 'Oscar Wilde' by Allison Bell, 2018...... 137 Image 11 - Artwork of 'Bugsy' by Lorraine 'Loz' De Cruz, 2018...... 139 Image 12 - Dean Lovatt as James Bedford & Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard (Leitch, 2018.) ...... 140 Image 13 - Artwork of '@lantis Election Posters' by Ally Snell, 2018...... 142 Image 14 - Artwork of 'Ghosts of @lantis Past, Present, and Future' by Allison Bell, 2018. .... 144

Tables Table 1 - @lantis audience age breakdown...... 155 Table 2 - @lantis gender identity breakdown...... 156 Table 3 - @lantis gender identity & age demographic comparison...... 156 Table 4 - Regular consumption of science fiction & Annual number of Theatre visits...... 157 Table 5 - Entertainment mediums used to engage with science fiction texts...... 158 Table 6 - Reasons for attending a performance of @lantis...... 160 Table 7 - ‘Did @lantis meet your expectations?’ ...... 162 Table 8 - Enjoyment of @lantis...... 163 Table 9 - ‘Was @lantis enhanced by watching it live in the theatre?’...... 165 Table 10 - Suggested improvements...... 166

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Chapter One – Introduction

This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of science fiction in the theatre, sets up the exploration of the relationship between live theatre and its audiences, establishes the central research questions, and gives a summary of each chapter in the exegesis.

On the 17th of February 2018, the Crown Theatre in Perth, Western Australia staged the opening performance of The Rocky Horror Show (1973), commencing a three- week run of twenty-six productions. This sexually charged pastiche of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) – as well as subsequent film adaptations – and 1950s B-Grade science fiction movies was touring Australia for the fifth time since 1981. It featured amongst its cast members its creator Richard O’Brien in the role of The Narrator. Forty-five years on from its debut season in London’s West End, The Rocky Horror Show had been officially toured multiple times around the world, being performed by a variety of companies in locations as diverse as Buenos Aires, Seoul, and Wagga Wagga. This much-loved cult musical features popular songs such as ‘Dammit, Janet!’, ‘Sweet Transvestite’, and – most likely being played at a wedding somewhere in the world as you read this – ‘The Time Warp’. If you attend a Halloween- themed fancy dress party, there is a decent chance you will encounter someone dressed as Dr Frank-N-Furter, Riff Raff, the titular Rocky Horror, or any number of the other vibrantly dressed characters. By the time the original West End production closed in 1980, The Rocky Horror Show had made its debut on Broadway,1 as well as in theatres in Copenhagen, Paris, Toronto,2 Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane.3 The popularity of The Rocky Horror Show makes it an almost unique property in popular entertainment: an original science fiction stage show that is both critically and commercially successful.

Looking back over the history of science fiction in theatre, it is notable how infrequently productions have achieved as much acclaim as The Rocky Horror Show, despite the genre flourishing in other mediums. Throughout the last one hundred years, science fiction has flourished in its medium of origin (literature), with titles such as Brave

1 https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-rocky-horror-show-3732 2 http://www.ozrockyhorror.com/International%20productions.html 3 http://www.ozrockyhorror.com/OZ%20stage%20productions.html 15

New World (1932), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Dune (1965), and The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) becoming bestsellers and shaping the landscape of the science fiction genre around them. You can bookend cinema’s most influential texts in the twentieth century with two science fiction properties; La Voyage Dans la Lune (1902) and The Matrix (1999) and chart the progression and development of science fiction film texts with the myriad of critical and commercial successes in between them. Other emergent entertainment mediums of the previous century such as television, radio, comic books, and video games welcomed science fiction texts into the fold; helping spread science fiction ideas and genre conventions to the general public.

The theatre, and live performance in general, is the remaining major entertainment medium that science fiction has not cracked. That is not to say that there have not been notable productions; Rossum’s Universal Robots (1920) – or R.U.R. for short – by Karel Capek was a critical and commercial success for the Czech playwright in the 1920’s. Translated into English and staged in the UK and the USA, R.U.R. was well received by audiences and critics alike. Roland Holt (writing for the New York-based magazine The Forum) said R.U.R. was ‘A highly original thriller, coming to a climax with a "chaste grand and general slaughter" of all mankind.’ (Holt, 1922) R.U.R. had a lasting impact on the science fiction genre beyond such positive reviews; it also introduced the word ‘robot’ to the English language. The term ‘rabota’ is a Slavic word meaning “serf labour.” Capek adapted it to “roboti” and used the term to name the slave labour force in R.U.R.4 and in doing so, introduced the word to the English language when the play was performed in the following years on English and American stages. Sadly for Capek, who wrote several other plays with science fiction motifs or themes, R.U.R. would be the only science fiction theatrical production written by him (or anyone else for that matter) to have such an impact on the genre until The Rocky Horror Show debuted more than fifty years later.

Notable or critically acclaimed science fiction stage shows in the decades post- Rocky Horror have only had small, initial successes in either a critical or commercial sense before fading from the public conscience. Return to the Forbidden Planet (1985) and Henceforward… (1987) led a brief resurgence of science fiction on stage in the 1980s, predominantly in the UK. More recently, larger scale productions of science

4 https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot 16 fiction literature adaptations have been well received. The film director Danny Boyle directed one such adaptation, a National Theatre production of Frankenstein in 2011 starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, who alternated between playing Victor Frankenstein and the Creature. Reviews of this show were mostly positive, with the Guardian’s theatre critic Michael Billington calling it:

A humane, intelligent retelling of the original story in which much of the focus is on the plight of the obsessive scientist's sad creation, who becomes his alter ego and his nemesis: it's rather like seeing The Tempest rewritten from Caliban's point of view.

(Billington, 2011)

A key factor in science fiction’s future on stage could be how we re-interpret classic texts of the genre from other entertainment mediums such as literature and film and give audiences a fresh perspective on their narratives by utilising the unique performance aspects of the theatre. Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s 2013 adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four included graphic depictions of torture performed live on stage to shock and sicken its audiences. Icke and MacMillan’s adaptation proved itself to be critically and commercially successful enough to be staged in the West End, on Broadway, and toured around Australia in 2017. However, none of these adaptations can be said to have brought a new wave of original science fiction texts or productions into world theatres.

Most of the notable science fiction theatre shows of the last fifty years are adaptations of existing science fiction texts from other entertainment mediums. Despite its origins on stage in the West End, Rocky Horror owes much of its popularity to another medium, cinema. 20th Century Fox released a film version of the musical – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – featuring members of the original stage cast including O’Brien, Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn, and Nell Campbell. Upon release, the film was not an immediate success. The celebrated American film critic Roger Ebert wrote that it:

Would be more fun, I suspect, if it weren’t a picture show. It belongs on a stage, with the performers and audience joining in a collective send-up. […] The choreography, the compositions and even the attitudes of the cast imply a stage ambience. And it invites the kind of laughter and audience participation that

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makes sense only if the performers are there on the stage, creating mutual karma.

(Ebert, 1976, date accessed 28/11/2018)

The inherent theatricality of Rocky Horror remained present in its film adaptation, and as a result, it did not sit comfortably in the medium of film for viewers such as Ebert. The cross-media nature of the text, and its exploration of non-heteronormative sexual practices, murder, cannibalism, and alien invasions, led to poor critical reviews and financial loss in its initial cinema run as it struggled to find its audience. Throughout the late 1970s, The Rocky Horror Picture Show began to garner a cult following in the cinemas of New York. Midnight screenings became increasingly popular as ‘fringe’ movie-goers engaged with a text that eschewed conventional film practices and traditional science fiction narratives.

Vera Dika explores the unusual relationship between The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its audience in her book Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: The Uses of Nostalgia (2003). She theorises that the theatricality retained from the stage show creates a form of engagement between text and viewer that is uncommon in cinema, and that this engagement is responsible in part for the film’s cult following:

The audience spontaneously responds by interjecting its own kind of “time warp” to the film. In The Rocky Horror Picture Show the spatially disjunctive world of the film takes a new direction. Because of the audience’s voiced and gestural responses, the normally present tense of the theatre experience is transformed and inverted to include all of the spatial and temporal modalities of the film itself.

(Dika, 2003, pp. 112)

The filmed interaction between the audience and The Rocky Horror Picture Show changed the usual cinema atmosphere into one more reminiscent of a live performance. Of particular significance for this study is Dika’s account of the way the audience interacts with the text once it has ended, and the desire expressed by some viewers for an ‘encore’ from a screen-based medium:

Rocky Horror’s audience in unison chants, “The End,” and then lets out a resounding cheer. In the resulting silence that follows, a single voice calls out above a lonely clap, “Yeah! Bravo! One

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more time… Well, are you going to play the movie again or what? You mean I gotta go home?” Time is circular for The Rocky Horror Picture Show regulars. Going home is only temporary, and for some, the Rocky Horror experience will be repeated hundreds, even thousands of times.

(Dika, 2003, pp. 112-113)

It is noteworthy in Dika’s account that though The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a film, audiences responded to it as if it were a stage show. For Ebert though, the text of Rocky Horror should preferably be viewed on stage. The multiple international tours of The Rocky Horror Show that continue to be staged and attended to this day demonstrate that science fiction texts can forge their own identities as stage productions. And – as in the case of Rocky Horror – the theatre is the most effective medium in which to present specific science fiction texts. In this study, I work in a similar hybrid way, combining a theatre performance with a radio play.

We are at a point in the early twenty-first century where science fiction texts are part of popular culture around the globe. In 2018, eight of the top ten grossing films released that year were either science fiction or contain elements of science fiction in their narratives (depending on whether or not one classifies superhero films as science fiction texts). Producers are continually re-adapting science fiction ‘classics’ (such as the BBC’s 2019 mini-series adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) and the film reboot of Frank Herbert’s book Dune due to be released in 2021). Authors are creating new works across the main entertainment mediums, including theatre.

Between 2010 and 2020, amateur and semi-professional production companies around the world have been putting on original and adapted science fiction plays and musicals at an increasing rate. Theatrical hotbeds such as New York, Chicago, and London are seeing more and more science fiction productions popping up on the fringes of their theatrical communities. Science fiction theatre festivals such as ‘Sci-Fest LA’ and ‘TALOS – the Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London’ are being formed to showcase these emerging texts. In my personal experience in Perth, I have seen several science fiction plays and musicals of varying quality over the past seven years. These performances range from the ambitious dystopian musical 2084 (2016) – inspired by Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – featuring a cast of 20+ actors and a live orchestra, to a one-man comedy called Stasis (2017), about an astronaut trapped alone on a spaceship 19 for five-hundred days. There has been a notable increase in smaller independent productions of science fiction plays in experimental theatre breeding grounds, such as the off-Broadway scene in New York. The American playwright James Comtois wrote on this rise of staged science fiction productions in New York City, and the potential implications this could have on future science fiction works:

Recent productions of original plays about aliens invading earth, humans connecting to supercomputers and robots bringing about the end of the world such as The Honeycomb Trilogy, DEINDE and Motherboard, have become increasingly popular among those who make and attend indie theatre. And the success of these and other sci-fi shows are spurring theatre artists to create even more work within the genre.

(Comtois, 2014)

The emergence of new texts inside the science fiction genre may inspire up-and-coming playwrights to work in this non-traditional field. Comtois interviewed fellow playwright J. Holtham, who expressed the view that science fiction is increasingly becoming part of the zeitgeist: “a generation of artists raised on sci-fi and fantasy has come of age and is writing the kind of work that makes them excited.” (Comtois, 2014) If as Holtham and Comtois note, the current and future generations have more access to science fiction texts than preceding generations, then it is logical to conclude that we will see more interest in science fiction texts across all mediums, theatre included.

To understand the current state of science fiction in theatre and live performance, it is necessary first to answer two questions: ‘What is science fiction?’ and ‘Why have science fiction texts had so little critical and/or commercial success in the theatre and live performance?’ With answers to these questions, I can examine the broader questions that are central to this exegesis. Those questions are:

1.) What are the benefits of live performance for science fiction? 2.) What can the theatre do for science fiction texts that other mediums cannot? 3.) Why is science fiction good for the medium of theatre?

To answer these central questions, I explore the history and genealogy of both the science fiction genre and of science fiction on the stage. I formulate a definition of

20 science fiction, and I examine different methods of staging texts to establish if the theatre offers benefits to certain types of science fiction texts over other entertainment mediums, including literature and film.

In the second chapter, I present the results of my literature review to help formulate a definition of science fiction. I come to this definition by examining its origins, previous classifications of science fiction, external social influences on science fiction in literature, film and other entertainment mediums, and existing academic writing on the subject. In the third chapter, I discuss my methodologies for both the exegetical and creative components of my study. The methods I focus on primarily are Practice-Led Research and Audience Reception Theory, with a secondary focus on the Iterative Cyclic Web. The fourth chapter explores the genealogy of science fiction in the theatre, examining significant texts of the last two hundred years on the stage. The fifth chapter examines the creative component of this PhD study, a series of science fiction radio plays called @lantis (2018). Here I explain the production of the series, from initial concept development to performances, and the rationale for why @lantis was put together in the manner it was. The sixth chapter provides an evaluation of the audience survey that I conducted alongside the production of @lantis. I then place these results in the broader context of the questions asked by this thesis and evaluate the outcomes. The seventh chapter discusses the implications of the results presented in chapter six and concludes by discussing the potential for future work in this field. The exegesis closes with a conclusion, an appendices section, and a bibliography containing a full list of references. This exegesis provides the findings from my research, namely that the science fiction genre and the medium of theatre benefit one another, and that audiences can be, and want to be, engaged by science fiction live performance texts.

I am primarily a theatre-maker rather than specifically a writer or a director, which is reflected in my research and exegesis. Producing @lantis required me to fulfil a number of different roles, including but not limited to writing, direction, sound design and editing, lighting design, visual effects, costuming, and publicity. I did this to give myself – in my role as researcher – the most exposure to and participation in the act of creating an original theatrical work of science fiction as possible. It is from these experiences as a general theatre-maker, rather than specifically as a writer or director,

21 that I engaged in my methodological approach of Practice as Research. As such, I write particularly from the point of view of a theatre-maker.

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Chapter Two – Literature Review

This chapter contains a review of the relevant literature used in this exegesis to answer my questions about what benefits science fiction and theatre offer one another, and what can be achieved with science fiction texts in theatre and live performance that cannot be replicated in other entertainment mediums. It provides definitions of science fiction, and science fiction performance texts. The chapter concludes with an exploration of science fiction as genre and how this has affected debates around science fiction definition.

Introduction

When I began this study, it was with curiosity as to why such a popular and imaginative literary genre as science fiction should have received so little attention from the theatre. To my surprise, I discovered hundreds of plays, musicals, and theatre pieces which fall into the category of science fiction. […] But despite their numbers and the fame of their authors, these plays seemed to have little or no connection to the science-fiction community, that thriving, specialized, and cliquish world of literature, fan magazines, conventions and contests whose ranks include adolescents, laborers, artists, and university professors. Rarely has a science-fiction writer embraced by this community ventured into theatre, and rarely has science-fiction playwriting aroused interest among science fiction audiences. Though occasional symptoms of chauvinism have appeared on both sides, there seems to be no conscious effort to keep science fiction and theatre apart. Rather, adherents of both camps seem to perceive an unbridgeable gap between the two media.

(Willingham, 1994, p. iv-v)

The above quotation – taken from the preface to Ralph Willingham’s book Science Fiction and the Theatre (1994) – is a neat summation of the issues I have encountered during my time studying the history of science fiction within the theatre. Namely, these issues are the failure of the theatrical community to embrace science fiction texts, and of science fiction authors who have largely ignored the stage as a possible medium for their stories. Within this chapter, I provide a list of definitions for key terms used throughout the exegesis. I then examine the academic research regarding science fiction and the theatre, utilise this to formulate a definition for the science fiction genre, and explore the history of science fiction on stage against the genre’s broader history.

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Through this, I identify potential benefits that the medium of theatre and live performance offers the science fiction genre. This literature review chapter has four sub- sections: Defining Science Fiction, Science Fiction Performance Texts, and Science Fiction as Genre.

Defining Science Fiction

In this sub-section, I examine the chronology of the use of the term ‘science fiction’. I explore the work of key figures and texts, and literary academics to explain my definition for a science fiction text.

In All the Worlds on Stage: The Question of Science Fiction’s Absence from the Theatre (Platt, 2015), I defined a science fiction text as one “that creatively challenges, changes, explores, or subverts scientific knowledge for the purposes of examining related ideas and theories in an entertaining fashion.” I reached this conclusion by considering the definitions given for the genre by previous science fiction and literature academics. My definition, as I explain below, is in line with more recent definitions such as those given by Roger Luckhurst and Ralph Willingham rather than with historical writers such as Hugo Gernsback and William Wilson. I have chosen to continue using my 2015 definition as the primary definition for science fiction texts here as it encompasses a broad scope of existing science fiction works and academic writing while also providing a framework that helps differentiate between science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and other similar genres. I acknowledge that my definition is not the final classification of what is or is not science fiction.

My definition of science fiction foregrounds the specific factors that make science fiction unique from other fantasy-based fiction. Scientific knowledge must be present in the narrative or plot for a text to be science fiction. Without an underpinning of scientific knowledge, the text belongs to the wider genre of Fantasy. As an example, we know that dinosaurs existed, and we know they are now extinct. The return of these titanic creatures to the world in Jurassic Park is achieved with humans using scientific methods to extract dinosaur DNA from a mosquito preserved in amber, filling in the gaps in the genetic code with DNA from non-extinct fauna such as crocodiles and birds, and using this new genetic code to build ‘new’ dinosaurs. Even though the science presented

24 in Jurassic Park is not always factually sound5, it follows a logic that is consistent with our world to justify the extraordinary events of the story. The dinosaurs do not turn up of their own accord, they are brought back at the behest of Dr John Hammond and a group of scientists. Scientific knowledge about extinct animals, molecular biology, and genetic sequencing, and the text’s exploration of associated ideas and theories, is central to the narrative.

There is much academic conjecture over the definition of the science fiction genre, so I began forming my definition by exploring the history of the term ‘science fiction.’ In A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject (1851), William Wilson examined nineteenth century poetry and included his original verses. This book contains the oldest known definition of the term ‘science fiction’:

In which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true – thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed in a garb of the Poetry of life.

(Wilson, 1851, p. 139-140)

Wilson used the term to describe the English poet and author R.H. Horne’s The Poor Artist; or, Seven Eye-sights and One Object (1850). In this work, Horne examined the nature of perspective from the viewpoint of insects and animals that requested drawings and sketches from the titular Poor Artist. When the Poor Artist refuses to show them the artworks, the creatures argue over the nature of truth in art. The story concludes that there is no single objective truth due to “the wonderful fact in Nature, that there are as many different worlds as there are different organs of sight; – and that the Creator has thus made for each different species – an Infinity out of One set of Objects.” (Horne, p. 234) Wilson wrote positively of this examination of differing perspectives: “He (Horne) does good work who leads us thus seductively, along the pleasant road of fiction, to such thought-inducing glimpses of the “Poetry of Science,” as we find here.” (Wilson, p.138) Wilson argued that it was important to familiarise science in fictional works: “We hope it will not be long before we may have other works

5 The oldest DNA samples found to date are believed to be up to 800,000 years old, and the current length of time DNA can potentially survive without breaking down completely is 6.8 million years. With the last dinosaurs having died out around 65 million years ago, the methods of bringing back dinosaurs shown in Jurassic Park are considered to be impossible. ('Jurassic Park' May Be Impossible, But Dino DNA Lasts Longer Than Thought, 2012.) 25 of Science-Fiction, as we believe such books likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail.” (p. 137) The significance of this initial definition, where the poetics of the story inform the reader of scientific knowledge and practices, became more important to the genre as it was developed in the twentieth century during the ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction’. In particular, a key differential between the development of ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ science fiction stories during this time was the level to which authors eschewed or embraced poetical elements over the truth of existing scientific knowledge.

Science fiction did not exist as a genre when Wilson was writing in the mid- nineteenth century. Such stories written during the latter half of the nineteenth century had several different names, as the film director James Gunn notes in his foreword to The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003):

Science-fiction stories and science-fiction writers had been around before, but what they wrote was not quite science fiction and it was not even called science fiction. […] (Jules) Verne’s adventure novels were called ‘voyages extraordinaires’ and (H.G.) Wells’s stories and novels were ‘scientific romances’.

(Gunn, 2003, p. xvi)

Multiple authors and literary critics used terms such as ‘scientific romances’, ‘speculative fiction’ and to a lesser extent ‘voyages extraordinaires’ throughout the late- nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to describe the emerging stories that would form the first generation of science fiction texts. These stories included the works of Verne, Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Mary Shelley. It was not until the early-to-mid twentieth century when the Luxembourgish-American publisher/inventor Hugo Gernsback re-coined the phrase that ‘science fiction’ was widely used for the stories it classifies today.

In 1926, Gernsback launched Amazing Stories (1926), a magazine series devoted to a genre of fictional works known today as science fiction. Gernsback created the term ‘Scientifiction’ for these fantastical tales and explained that, “By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story – a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” (Gernsback, 1926) Gernsback argued that it was important that the scientific content of such stories was essential to

26 the narrative and that for ‘Scientifiction’ to succeed, writers had to use a stylised fashion that made such stories enjoyable as well as informative:

Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading – they are always instructive. They supply knowledge that we might not otherwise obtain – and they supply it in a very palatable form. For the best of these modern writers of scientifiction have the knack for imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we are being taught.

(Gernsback, April 1926, Amazing Stories #1, p. 3)

Gernsback possessed an optimism for this emerging genre and the sorts of stories that contemporary authors could potentially achieve. Much like Wilson, Gernsback believed that ‘Scientifiction’ could have an impact beyond the reach of other genres of fictional literature: “Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress as well.” (Gernsback, 1926) ‘Scientifiction’ – subsequently reworked as ‘science fiction’ – captured the essence of Wilson’s definition. Whether or not Gernsback was aware of Wilson’s definition is unknown. However, his creation and utilisation of the compound word ‘scientifiction’, instead of Wilson’s pre-existing term, suggests that Gernsback probably had not encountered it.

Gernsback’s definition has continued to be the rudimentary basis for most subsequent definitions of science fiction. My own definition was influenced by the work of Gernsback, and to a lesser extent by Wilson, with regards to the notion of science fiction stories being instructive and informed as well as interesting. Without the underpinning of scientific knowledge or understanding informing the narrative or identity of the text, the work becomes less science fiction, a story with a basis in the sciences, and more something that belongs in the broader realm of Fantasy.

The concept of the fantastic is increasingly examined by academics across all entertainment mediums, as evidenced by the rise in academic conferences, writing, and journals6 discussing it. Defining the differences between the fantastic elements of science fiction and of the wider fantasy genre is important as they have grown into distinctly different genres over time, even though science fiction developed as an

6 Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts is one such publication that has collated and published academic articles on the matter since 2006. 27 offshoot of fantasy literature. British author Sir Terry Pratchett – well known for writing the comedic Fantasy series of Discworld novels – said when asked in a 2009 interview about the similarities between the genres of science fiction and fantasy:

They tend to get lumped under the heading of ‘Speculative Fiction’ which I don’t think actually moves us on at all. The fact is that science fiction is a subset of fantasy, and it’s often fantasy with rivets on the outside. But it’s noticeable now that fantasy is definitely in the ascendant and science fiction, in the UK at least, appears to be a poor relation.

(Terry Pratchett: Science Fiction or Fantasy? Mark Lawson Talks to Terry Pratchett – BBC Studios, 2009, 00:01:48)

Pratchett – who also wrote science fiction literature such as the Long Earth series – acknowledged the differences between science fiction and fantasy were significant enough that attempts to collate them under a single catch-all title like ‘Speculative Fiction’ was not helpful. Much of the early work that could be considered science fiction – or at least ‘soft’ science fiction – by authors like Verne and Wells was speculative in nature: What if Martians invaded the Earth? What if submarines like the Nautilus existed? They focused on fantastical events brought into being through a loose application of the existing sciences or the forecasting of their contemporary scientific understanding. The inciting event or condition of the stories were science fiction in nature, even if the stories did not always honour the scientific truth of the subject matter. Even these stories, as loosely based in scientific understanding as they are, are different from works of the fantasy genre. Fantasy narratives can be drawn from any source, set in any location, and needs not follow the established order of the real world. A science fiction story must, somewhere at its core, contain scientific knowledge or a proposition or question based on actual scientific knowledge from which the world, the characters, and the narrative originate.

Science fiction stories continued to change and develop from the pulp magazine era of the 1920s and ‘30s. By the 1950s, authors such as George Orwell, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury had used science fiction as a lens to examine politics, technology, and the human condition; often with a foreboding tone for what they saw coming in the future. The work generated during this period is colloquially known as ‘The Golden Age’ of science fiction. This body of work consists of texts and authors who valorise “a

28 particular sort of writing: ‘Hard science fiction’, linear narratives, heroes solving problems or countering threats in a space-opera or a technological-adventure idiom.” (Roberts, p. 195) As the stories changed, so too did definitions of the genre. The work of Darko Suvin, a Croatian-American poet and literary theorist was a central part of this change. He defined science fiction in a manner that reflected this more philosophical form of the genre in his essay On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre (1972):

(Science fiction is) the literature of cognitive estrangement. This definition seems to possess the unique advantage of rendering justice to a literary tradition which is coherent through the ages and within itself, and yet distinct from non-fictional utopianism, from naturalistic literature, and from other non-naturalistic fiction. It thus permits us to lay the basis of a coherent poetics on SF.

(Suvin, 1972, pp. 372-373)

Suvin’s definition is indicative of a change in how and why writers were writing science fiction stories. Events that occurred between the 1920s and the 1970s (The Great Depression, World War II, The Cold War, The Space Race, etc.) shaped the way societies viewed scientific advancements. Gernsback’s generation, fed on a literary diet of optimists like Verne, saw the inventions of the motor car and powered flight. Science and technology were helping hands, allowing humanity to advance. Suvin’s generation read Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) while the looming spectre of nuclear annihilation hung overhead. Scientific advancements were no longer viewed as just benevolent, and the rise of cautionary science fiction stories reflected this.

Suvin’s work has influenced many subsequent science fiction academics and their definitions, including my own. Specifically, his work regarding the concept of ‘the Novum’ within science fiction texts was key to how I structured my definition. It is also the basis for one of three guidelines to define science fiction works proposed by Ralph Willingham in his book Science Fiction and the Theatre. Willingham also draws on the work of science fiction academics Mark Rose and Kathleen L. Spencer to assist him in identifying what is and is not a science fiction play. The first guideline, based on Suvin’s work, is ‘The Novum’ in which a fictional scientific anomaly or invention is the text’s central characteristic feature. The second guideline is ‘The Fantastic’ which is extrapolated from Rose’s writings on science fiction from the 1980s. ‘The Fantastic’ is

29 where the setting or time of the story world differentiates it from our own. The third guideline is Spencer’s ‘Audience Expectation’ where the reader’s assumptions and foreknowledge (and potentially the writer’s awareness of this) influence the interpretation of the text.

Of the few texts that do exist on the subject, Ralph Willingham’s Science Fiction and the Theatre is the most comprehensive. It provides a history of the genre in the medium up until the early 1990s; examines the significant science fiction dramas to evaluate “their literary and theatrical merit” (p. iv); explores methods of staging science fiction productions; and provides an appendix of over three-hundred science fiction productions. It is an essential text for anyone wishing to explore the field of science fiction in the theatre, albeit the age of the text means that it does not include science fiction works produced since 1994. At the time Willingham wrote Science Fiction and the Theatre there was little existing academic writing on the specific subject of science fiction theatre, a situation that has only been marginally improved upon in the twenty- five years since. Kristen Shepherd-Barr’s Science on Stage (2006) is one of the few academic texts published after Science Fiction and the Theatre that is focused on the topic of science on stage, although it primarily concerns itself with the more realistic, biographical depictions of the history of real scientists and their discoveries on stage rather than the fantastical fiction tradition of Verne, Asimov, and Bradbury.

Most compendiums about science fiction focus on the literary origins of the genre and few of them reference the existence of science fiction theatre at all. For example, Adam Roberts’s The History of Science Fiction (2006) offers a wide-ranging breakdown on key science fiction figures and texts and is useful for understanding what makes up the science fiction genre, but it provides almost nothing on the subject of science fiction in theatre. In a chapter titled Late Twentieth-Century Science Fiction: Multimedia, Visual Science Fiction and Others, Roberts examines science fiction in the mediums of comic books and graphic novels, paintings and illustrations, sculpture, digital art, video games, audio dramas, and – somewhat bizarrely – UFOlogy, but not theatre. The only nods to science fiction theatre in this otherwise comprehensive examination of the genre are to Karel Capek’s play R.U.R (p. 168) in the chapter High Modernist Science Fiction. This chapter also mentions the Australian performer Stelarc, who “has worked since the late 1960s with a cyborg-inspired series of performance

30 artworks. His ‘obsolete’ [his term] human body is augmented with a wide variety of technical prostheses.” (p.329) Whether or not one counts Stelarc’s performance artwork as belonging to the medium of the theatre is debateable. I do not consider it to belong to the canon of science fiction theatre as Stelarc’s work is about the reality of our increasingly technological world and its future, it is not a narrative based in fiction. This lack of attention towards stage science fiction is typical across most compendiums of the genre, a reflection of just how small a contribution such texts are perceived to have made to the broader canon.

Willingham provides a series of guidelines for the definition of science fiction texts that I incorporate into the formation of my own definition. The first guideline is built from Darko Suvin’s concept of The Novum. Suvin formed his own definitions for what is and is not science fiction, including a paper from 1978 where he suggested a list of one hundred and one books from the Victorian era that should be excluded from future science fiction bibliographies.7 Suvin shares similar opinions on science fiction with Gernsback and Wilson; that such stories can be both poetical and true. According to Suvin, good science fiction needed to blend the imaginative, creative aspects of humanity with the rigid, factual structure of scientific knowledge:

This is an educational literature, hopefully less deadening than most compulsory education in our split national and class societies, but irreversibly shaped by the pathos of preaching the good word of human curiosity, fear, and hope [...] It demands from the author and reader, teacher and critic, not merely specialized, quantified knowledge (scientia) but a social imagination whose quality, whose wisdom (sapientia), testifies to the maturity of his critical and creative thought.

(Suvin, 1972, p. 381)

This intersection of knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia), and how these two aspects either complement or contradict one another regarding the Novum – the new entity in the story that is a result of the science fiction premise – is central to a critical element of my definition of science fiction. The combination of scientia and sapientia in a text is where science fiction can creatively challenge, change, explore, or subvert

7 The appropriately titled On What Is and Is Not an SF Narration; With a List of 101 Victorian Books That Should Be Excluded From SF Bibliographies. 31 scientific knowledge, where the conflict or conflicts of the narrative come into being, and knowledge and wisdom collide and creatively challenge our understanding of the world. Victor Frankenstein gains the knowledge of how to re-animate dead tissue (scientia) early in the text of Frankenstein but does not possess the wisdom to see that doing this is dangerous. By the time he is tasked by the Creature to re-animate a female equivalent, Victor has seen the destruction wrought by the Creature and denies this request (sapientia), acknowledging his initial action of re-animating the Creature was a mistake. Questions of morality, mortality, and scientific responsibility – central themes of Frankenstein and many subsequent science fiction stories – arise from this intersection of scientia and sapientia, and the difference between knowing and understanding that arises from the Novum – the ability to create new life from the deceased.

Willingham’s second guideline concerns a broader interpretation of what a science fiction text is than what Suvin proposed. In Alien Encounters: Anatomy of Science Fiction (1981), Mark Rose examines the science fiction genre and its commonly explored thematic story elements, defining them as follows:

Science-fiction stories either portray a world that is in some respect different from our own, as for instance in stories set in the future or on other planets, or, alternatively, they describe the impact of some strange element upon our world, as in alien- invasion stories or evolutionary fables. Science-fiction stories, in other words, always contain an element of the fantastic.

(Rose, 1981, p. 3)

Rose’s definition of the Fantastic does not specify that the fantastical element must result from some manipulation of scientific knowledge or understanding. Thus, texts that some might otherwise consider as Fantasy rather than science fiction due to a lack of ‘novum’ – such as the Star Wars film series (1977 – 2019) – may still be a part of the science fiction canon. This broadening of the genre’s boundaries by theorists such as Rose has led to some confusion regarding classifications, particularly between science fiction and fantasy. I explore this topic further in the sub-section Science Fiction as Genre with a definitional disagreement that took place in the public sphere between the authors Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin. This second guideline built upon Rose’s definition did not influence my definition as strongly as Suvin’s theory did, but the notion

32 that science fiction stories need to “contain an element of the fantastic” is important. For while the Novum states there must be a new thing, idea, or concept in the story to make it science fiction, Rose suggests that differences in setting, character, or technology without a direct conflict between scientia and sapientia is sufficient. Star Wars does not tell a story that depends on or is built from a manipulation of our scientific understanding, there is no obvious Novum.8 But it is a story filled with fantastic elements: lightsabres, Death Stars, alien races, incredible spaceships, and so on. Rose’s definition allows for these science fiction adjacent texts to be included, and a ‘space opera’ like Star Wars is important to the development of the science fiction genre even if the text itself is not strictly speaking a science fiction narrative.

Willingham based his third guideline on the work of Kathleen L. Spencer, who wrote that science fiction could have no definition beyond the reader’s expectations. In 'The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low’: Towards a Stylistic Description of Science Fiction (1983), Spencer questioned the language of the science fiction genre:

(1) What are the norms or expectations – the conventions by which readers interpret the sentences of SF texts? How do: they make sense of sentences [like the one in my title] which, in a “realistic” text, that would be nonsensical?

(2) What techniques do SF writers use to create and fulfil those expectations?

(Spencer, 1983, p. 1)

Spencer’s paper utilises Suvin’s definition of ‘cognitive estrangement’; the “main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.” (p. 1) According to Spencer, ‘cognitive estrangement’ is responsible for creating reader expectations of the text and the wider genre; thus it is the reader and not the author who is responsible for interpreting a text as being ‘science fiction’:

The most crucial and characteristic technique is an obliquity of approach: rather than describing an alien culture frankly to an “earth” audience from the outside, the SF author typically writes from the standpoint of an inhabitant of the culture addressing a

8 It could be argued that ‘The Force’ – the power that is used by powerful beings in the Star Wars universe to perform miraculous feats – could be considered a novum following developments to the nature of what The Force is that occurred in later films and spin-off literature. However, certainly for the foundational original trilogy of Star Wars films released between 1977 and 1983, this was not present in the narrative. 33

fictive audience of his or her contemporaries, who take for granted precisely those characteristics of the culture that the actual audience will find most unlike their own real experience.

(Spencer, 1983, p. 1)

Willingham regards Spencer’s guideline of ‘Audience Expectation’ as “especially relevant in science fiction drama of the post-modern period, which relies heavily on iconography.” (p. 17) Willingham argues that such a definition utilises science fiction frameworks and genre conventions to tell other sorts of stories. The central messages or morality of these stories based on our reality and experience allows for the inclusion of complex texts that might not possess a ‘novum’ or elements of ‘the fantastic’ into the science fiction canon. Spencer’s ‘Audience Expectation’ theory feeds into later work by Farah Mendlesohn, which I examine in Science Fiction as Genre. This third guideline informs the application of my own definition, rather than helping build it. For while my definition is dependent upon the text to challenge, change, examine and/or subvert scientific knowledge, it is also dependent on the reader to understand how and why these manipulations are occurring for science fiction to exist. Without the basis in our own world and observations being present in the reader, the fantastical elements of science fiction are indistinguishable from those of the Fantasy genre.

The final definition that I drew upon to form my own definition of science fiction is reflective of many twenty-first century definitions that are an amalgamation of the optimism reflected in early science fiction and are also grounded in the reflective examinations of texts from the Golden Age:

SF texts imagine futures or parallel worlds premised on perpetual change associated with modernity, often by extending or extrapolating aspects of Mechanism from the contemporary world. In doing so, SF texts capture the fleeting fantasies thrown up in a swirl of modernity.

(Luckhurst, 2005, p. 3)

Roger Luckhurst encapsulates within his definition that both historical and contemporary science fiction texts mirror the technological, medical, and social progression that occurs within the societies that produce them. These external influences on science fiction authors and writers, and the audiences who read their work, are a significant factor in understanding how the genre came to be in the first 34 place, and why it remains popular in most entertainment mediums. This genre allows authors and readers alike to examine the ideas and theories of the existing scientific knowledge pool in a piece of entertainment. Science fiction stories have the capacity to mix observation with premonition more so than other genres would be permitted by their conventions.

While there are other theorists and definitions I read whilst forming my definition (some of whom are discussed later in this chapter), it is primarily the definitions of Gernsback, Willingham, Suvin, Rose, Spencer, and Luckhurst that I drew upon. Gernsback’s view of science fiction as “a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision” – evoking Wilson’s earlier concept of such informative stories being “poetical and true” – remains the cornerstone of science fiction definitions. Luckhurst adds the reflective nature of science fiction texts mirroring aspects of our understanding of the world. Willingham’s guidelines were integral to my building of a definition for the science fiction genre. Suvin’s Novum forms the crux of the narrative, the reason for the story to exist, the fuel to drive the plot. The Novum is the scientific knowledge that is challenged, changed, examined, and/or subverted. Rose’s ‘Fantastic’ informs how creatively these challenges, changes, examinations, and/or subversions may be implemented by their authors. Spencer’s ‘Audience Expectations’ tells us how the audience may interpret these manipulations. Ultimately, my definition of a science fiction text being “one that creatively challenges, changes, explores, or subverts scientific knowledge for the purposes of examining related ideas and theories in an entertaining fashion” cannot be the final word on the genre, as the works of these academics and others demonstrates that this is a genre of change dependent upon our own, ever-increasing understanding of our reality. Science fiction will only stop growing and changing when we do. Until such a time, we plant our flags in the ground, draw our lines in the sand, and define that which we observe as best we can.

Science Fiction Performance Texts

I examine several creative works of science fiction to support my argument for science fiction in theatre. This sub-section provides an overview of the central texts, a

35 brief explanation of their origins and their relevance. These texts include Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the most-often cited textual genesis of the science fiction genre; The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, a text adapted into a radio play in 1938 that caused mass hysteria when mistaken for an actual news report about Martians invading the Earth; and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, representative of the shift during science fiction’s ‘Golden age’ of literature from thrilling adventure stories with rockets and robots to introspective examinations that warn of future dangers. The most significant of these texts is Frankenstein, which details the account of Dr Victor Frankenstein who successfully re-animates a body built from the organs of several recently deceased people, imbuing the spark of life into previously dead tissue. His creation – referred to as ‘The Creature’ – is subjected to ill-treatment from the world at large and ultimately brings about the destruction of Victor and everything significant to him. Frankenstein is an important text for science fiction live performance because it is one of the most commonly adapted science fiction stories, both for the stage and other entertainment mediums: “It has been so often reimagined and envisioned, particularly in the cinema, that most people have some sense of the core of the story. To return to the novel itself can even be a slightly disorienting experience.” (Roberts, 2006) The Internet Movie Database (date accessed: 06/03/2019) contains 177 films with Frankenstein in the title, including Frankenstein (1931)9 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), which are direct adaptations of the original text. The Creature, usually appearing with other icons of the Horror genre, as in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), is central to many films. The number of stage adaptations of Frankenstein is similarly lengthy, with Willingham dedicating a whole chapter of Science Fiction and the Theatre to dramatic adaptations of Frankenstein. I discuss the impact of these adaptations in Chapter Four – The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction.

I also examine two science fiction stage productions from the 1920s; Karel Capek’s R.U.R., and The Blue Flame (1920) by George Hobart and John Willard. Each included similar Frankensteinian themes but were met with wildly differing levels of critical reception. R.U.R. is a play about artificial people called ‘roboti’ (or ‘robots’) built

9 This being notable as the first of three films featuring Boris Karloff, whose portrayal of ‘The Creature’ remains the most well-known and mimicked to this day. 36 to act as a slave labour force for humanity. R.U.R. is significant for science fiction theatre for two reasons: it is responsible for the introduction of the word ‘robot’ to the English language, and it is the first science fiction play that achieved critical and commercial success. The Blue Flame, in which a scientist revives his recently deceased wife only to find she no longer has a soul, is regarded as one of the biggest flops ever to be staged on Broadway. Exploring the reasons behind the differing fortunes of these two productions exposes potential factors for what does and does not benefit science fiction in the theatre.

Science fiction stories – both original and adaptations – have flourished in film. I discuss the following key films: La Voyage dans la Lune (1902), Metropolis (1927), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Star Wars (1977). La Voyage dans la Lune, a twelve-minute silent movie directed by George Melies, is one of the earliest science fiction films. Its image of a rocket ship crashing into the eye of the ‘Man in the Moon’ remains one of the most iconic images in the history of cinema. La Voyage dans la Lune is particularly relevant to this exegesis as Melies utilised many of the contemporary visual effects methods of late nineteenth century theatre to create the fantastical landscapes of his film. This film showcases a period in time when theatre and cinema were more closely aligned than they are today. Metropolis, a German silent film written by Thea von Harbou about the titular futuristic mega-city, is a significant text in the history of science fiction. While the film did not invent the concept of the robot,10 Metropolis popularised the idea of mechanical beings based on humans, and its commentary on class struggle influenced many future science fiction texts. The idyllic lives of the upper class are juxtaposed with the drudgery of the working class, showcasing how one person’s Utopia can be another’s Dystopia.

Forbidden Planet and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are both examples of cinematic adaptations of plays that found great critical or commercial success on the silver screen. Forbidden Planet is a re-imagining of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) with Prospero the wizard portrayed as a scientist (Dr Edward Morbius) whose incredibly abilities come from his knowledge of science rather than magic. Continuing the trend of robot characters that Metropolis popularised, Caliban, no longer the

10 That honour belongs to Capek’s R.U.R. 37 monstrous son of a witch, is a mechanical character called Robby the Robot that Dr Morbius builds to serve his will. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a direct adaptation of the original English musical The Rocky Horror Show, which can claim to be the most impactful work of science fiction theatre produced to date. The cult popularity of the stage shows was helped in no small part by the release of the film, featuring a number of the West End cast in their original roles. Rocky Horror is rooted in science fiction B- movie culture. It features many elements of Gernsback-era science fiction stories including aliens, laser guns, and (yet again) Frankensteinian themes. It both pays homage and pastiches the science fiction texts that precede it, while also telling a story that uses sexuality in a way rarely seen before in science fiction storytelling of any entertainment medium. The Rocky Horror Picture Show has garnered the status of a cult film with legions of loyal fans who continue to gather at re-screenings to sing and dance along to the text’s numerous songs. Examining Forbidden Planet and The Rocky Horror Picture Show reveals how intertextuality allows stories to flourish and benefit the various mediums they inhabit.

Finally, I examine Star Wars because of the huge impact the first film (in what is an eleven-film franchise)11 has had on the genres of both science fiction and fantasy, as well as on the film industry. When first released in 1977 Star Wars was a phenomenon. The impact of Star Wars continued into the early 1980s with the release of the sequels Star Wars: The Empire Strike Back (1980) and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). The popularity of this trilogy amongst cinema audiences led to the propagation of film franchises, in which the same characters, settings, and story elements appear in multiple films. Whether or not Star Wars is a bona fide science fiction text (due to lack of a science fiction premise in its narrative) the impact the series has had on how science fiction films were made after 1977 is such that it is a necessary inclusion in discussions on science fiction cinema.

Lastly, with regards to science fiction theatre, I examine several twenty-first century stage productions; the majority of which are original productions staged in Perth, Western Australia. I do this because these productions were the most accessible to me while I was writing this exegesis. The productions I examine each utilise different

11 With more films scheduled to be released in the 2020’s, as well as the additional stories set in the Star Wars universe being made for other entertainment mediums. 38 styles of live performance. I assess them on how effectively their differing staging methods helped tell their science fiction stories. Key texts include Laika (2017), Captain Spaceship (2019), and Cosmic Bottle (2017). Laika, a radio-play about the Russian space program of the 1950s and ‘60s, centres around real events and people for a story about pushing the limits of both knowledge and morality in the pursuit of glory. Captain Spaceship, an improvised series of one-hour ‘episodes’, follows the comedic crew of an intergalactic vessel. The show utilises familiar science fiction tropes from existing texts such as Star Trek and Firefly as a starting point for the improvisers to build the world of the show from. Cosmic Bottle is an absurdist one-act play set on the Voyager II satellite as it leaves the Solar System. Cosmic Bottle was also a production in which I was a cast member, so it offers a different perspective on science fiction plays from other contemporary productions. I also examine two additional science fiction productions performed in Perth, both of which were written by myself and staged as part of my research into the topic of science fiction theatre. I examine and reference Thaw (2015) and @lantis from my perspective as the writer/director of the production in Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis. For additional international context, I also discuss some of the productions I attended at the 2019 TALOS Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London.

Science Fiction as Genre

Formulating a definitive definition of science fiction as a genre is complicated because there is no clear consensus about what content science fiction texts should include. How science fiction is defined is essential to my exploration of science fiction in the theatre, as genre impacts on the audiences that attend theatrical shows. Individuals have their preferences to the types of texts they like to consume, and genre is cultural shorthand for what individual texts will likely contain. As an example, people who enjoy stories with paranormal happenings, mysterious villains, and gruesome injuries and deaths befalling protagonists are likely to be attracted to a new, unknown text belonging to the genre of ‘Horror.’ Science fiction has elements of this within its genre identity already, but further solidification of what its genre conventions broadly are, particularly amongst theatre audiences, would help attract those who like to engage in science fiction stories.

39

In An Introduction to Genre Theory (1997), Daniel Chandler writes it is not a simple task to apply universal rules or laws on what elements belong in which genres:

It is difficult to make clear-cut distinctions between one genre and another: genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres' (such as comedy-thrillers). Specific genres tend to be easy to recognize intuitively but difficult (if not impossible) to define. Particular features which are characteristic of a genre are not normally unique to it; it is their relative prominence, combination and functions which are distinctive.

(Chandler, 1997, p. 2)

As such, definitions vary wildly. Some even question whether we should consider science fiction a genre at all. In the introductory chapter to The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Farah Mendlesohn proposes that science fiction is not so much a genre but a form of narrative discourse by which the reader can approach any text:

Science fiction is less a genre – a body of writing from which one can expect certain plot elements and specific tropes – than an ongoing discussion. Its texts are mutually referential, may be written by those active in criticism [...] and have often been generated from the same fan base which supports the market. The reader’s expectations of sf are governed less by what happens than how that happening is described, and by the critical tools with which the reader is expected to approach the text.

(Mendlesohn, 2003, p. 1)

Mendlesohn addresses a problem that often occurs in the classification of science fiction; that many science fiction texts fit within other genre’s definitions. For example, films such as Alien (1979) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) can justifiably be considered science fiction or horror films. Similarly, are The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978) and Red Dwarf (1988) humorous science fiction texts or are they primarily comedies with elements of science fiction?

The issue with attempting to classify science fiction texts is the wide variety of themes, tropes, and topics that they can explore and utilise. There is less uniformity between the texts that might belong to science fiction than there is between other genres such as ‘Crime’ or ‘Horror’, whose genre conventions have more explicit

40 parameters. Mendlesohn expands further on this point by examining the novel Schild’s Ladder (2002) by Greg Egan:

If sf were a genre, we would know the rough outline of every book that we picked up. If it were a mystery, we would know that there was ‘something to be found out’; if a romance, that two people would meet, make conflict and fall in love; if horror, that there would be an intrusion of the unnatural into the world that would eventually be tamed or destroyed. But Egan’s Schild’s Ladder offers all three of these outlines. [...] SF is quite happy to extract its plot structures from any available genre, and thus each individual book could potentially be identified with one of these genres rather than with sf, we need to consider whether sf does ‘own’ a narrative.

(Mendlesohn, 2003, p.2-3)

Mendlesohn’s argument is similar to that of Willingham’s third science fiction definition guideline, based upon Kathleen Spencer’s Audience Expectation theory. For me, this compilation of ideas serves to demonstrate just how far we are from agreement on what is and is not science fiction; especially when its status as a genre is under question. A universal consensus of what is and is not science fiction is not a realistic goal. However, a clearer and more widely agreed-upon definition relating to the science fiction genre allows those who create science fiction works for the stage a better chance of engaging with the core precepts of the text and attracting a higher number of audience members to attend the theatres and engage with the texts.

If authors classify their work, which fit the parameters of science fiction, as something other than science fiction, is the work science fiction? This question is relevant, as genre classifications are an essential factor in how and why specific live performance texts are selected. Practitioners’ understanding of genre affects how those who create, stage, and advertise theatrical productions perceive and speak about texts. We will examine this issue of genre definition through a series of interactions between two leading figures in science fiction and fantasy literature from the late twentieth century: Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin.

In a review of Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood written for The Guardian in 2009, Le Guin wrote that Atwood’s reluctance to define her stories as science fiction was

41 indicative of an author attempting to protect her work from critical reproach by those who look down on science fiction in literature:

Atwood doesn’t want any of her books to be called science fiction. In her recent, brilliant essay collection, Moving Targets, she says that everything that happens in her novels is possible and may even have already happened, so they can’t be science fiction, which is “fiction in which things happen that are not possible today.” This arbitrary restrictive definition seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize- awarders. She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.

(Le Guin, The Guardian, 29/8/2009)

Le Guin interprets Atwood’s statement that she does not want any of her works classified as science fiction as being influenced by cultural and critical factors rather than by the content of the texts themselves. Le Guin is not denigrating Atwood’s work; she even states that Atwood’s work is “brilliant” and is supportive of the quality of her writing. Does Le Guin, or anyone other than Atwood, have a right to place her works in a genre in which she does not think they belong? Does the author have the final say on a text’s genre, or do others define its place in the collective pantheon?

In the autobiographical account of her life as an author In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011), Atwood responds to Le Guin’s piece by explaining her reasoning for not referring to her works as science fiction. Atwood does not state that she deliberately defined her works as not being science fiction to avoid the chagrin of the critical literary community. She explains that for her, science fiction texts are more akin to the Fantasy genre; explorations of the impossible, whereas her work aligns with ‘Speculative Fiction’, where the story elements and imagined scientific advances are more plausible:

What I mean by “science fiction” is those books that descend from H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled, blood-sucking Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for me, “speculative fiction” means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things that really could happen but just hadn’t 42

completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians. Not because I don’t like Martians, I hasten to add: they just don’t fall within my skill set.

(Atwood, 2011, pp. 6)

Atwood’s discussion about the terminology of science fiction and speculative-fiction offers fascinating insights into how two well-known, contemporary authors of fiction – be it science, speculative, or fantasy – discuss the stories they create.

Atwood and Le Guin’s differing opinions on the genre are a microcosm of the difficulties inherent in attempting to form a definition for science fiction. Two well respected and revered authors who have worked in-and-around the genre hold very different opinions about fundamental aspects of the discipline within which they work. Atwood learnt of these differences when she and Le Guin spoke together in 2010 at a public discussion as part of the Portland Arts and Lectures series:

I found that what she (Le Guin) means by “science fiction” is speculative fiction about things that really could happen, whereas things that really could not happen she classifies under “fantasy.” Thus, for her – as for me – dragons would belong in fantasy, as would, I suppose, the film Star Wars and most of the TV series Star Trek. […] In short, what Le Guin means by “science fiction” is what I mean by “speculative fiction,” and what she means by “fantasy” would include what I mean by “science fiction.”

(Atwood, 2011, pp. 6-7)

For Atwood, science fiction is fantastical impossibilities of the real world. In contrast, Le Guin felt science fiction had a broader scope, incorporating the more reality-based works of Speculative Fiction within her definition. Both authors are within their rights to define their fiction in whatever manner they please, particularly as there is no generally agreed-upon definition of science fiction.

That there is no generally agreed-upon definition of science fiction is of particular importance to the theatre because genre influences how producers select plays. Further, genre determines how theatre companies market plays, which is particularly relevant in the competitive high-end markets such as Broadway or the West End. Known properties and genres that have a proven history of performing well commercially and 43 critically are more likely to be picked by venues for their ability to attract audiences. Likewise, more experimental productions are less likely to be picked up for their unknown quantities. They will often only reach the more populated venues after proving themselves in smaller venues elsewhere first. Science fiction is not, nor has it ever been, a ‘go-to’ staple of the theatrical world, in part because no one knew what it was until the twentieth century. Even in the twenty-first century, authors like Atwood and Le Guin differ on what is and is not a science fiction text. Clearer definitions for creators and audiences of what belongs in the science fiction genre will help clarify the aims and goals of these stories and what their creators hope to achieve with them. A greater understanding from all parties is key in generating the spaces for the future development of science fiction, particularly on the stage.

Conclusion

Despite the misgivings of Mendlesohn and Spencer towards definitions of science fiction as a genre, it is difficult to discuss it as anything else given wider public and academic perspectives. Willingham does not dispute that science fiction is a genre but believes that it is too broad to define adequately:

As science fiction broadened its horizons to encompass metaphysics, religion, and even elements of fantasy, solid boundaries became permeable, so that today even leading science-fiction critics acknowledge the futility of attempting a concise definition.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 15)

The permeability of science fiction texts is a strength of the ‘genre’, even though it affects our capacity to define what makes a text science fiction. The gap in understanding between Atwood and Le Guin, two key figures in science fiction literature, is important to recognise as we move on to examine science fiction and its history in the theatre and other entertainment mediums. Atwood herself says as much in summarising her debates with Le Guin: “When it comes to genres, the borders are increasingly undefended, and things slip back and forth across them with insouciance.” (Atwood, 2011) It is unclear where the borders of the genre are, and this may go some way to explaining why theatre, a medium which heavily utilises genre conventions for

44 storytelling and marketing, has rarely embraced the science fiction genre. Much like the creature at the centre of the genre’s most infamous text Frankenstein, science fiction does not understand itself, made up as it is of the disparate parts of other stories and given life by unwitting creators. They did not know the full impact of what they would bring into this unsuspecting world. Science fiction is here to stay, it has its audiences in literature, film, video games, and most other mediums of entertainment. Instead of shunning this bizarre creation as Victor Frankenstein did, it would be more beneficial for theatre to understand and embrace it.

This history of defining science fiction is important for my production and research because it clarifies the nature of the genre; what is, is not, and could be science fiction, and what differentiates the texts of the genre from other works that belong under the broader category of ‘fantasy’. It also allows us to more accurately pinpoint potential strengths and weaknesses of the genre with regards to theatrical presentations of science fiction texts, be they original or adaptation.

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Chapter Three – Methodologies

This chapter discusses the three primary methodological approaches undertaken as part of this exegesis; Practice as Research, Iterative Cyclic Web, and Audience Reception Theory, and how they were utilised within the performative and research components.

Introduction

How can art or design practice interact with research in such a manner that they will together produce new knowledge, create a new point of view or form new, creative ways of doing research?

(Mäkelä, p. 157)

The nature of theatre, acting, performance, and associated creative works has changed markedly over the last two hundred years. Creative practitioners’ and audiences’ options for performing in and consuming theatre in the twenty-first century are greater both in terms of technological capacity and accessibility than that of their nineteenth and twentieth century counterparts. Once audiences only saw acting in specific locations shared between the performers and the audience. Nowadays, audiences can consume performances via numerous methods and in non-performative settings. “Performance happens in more types of theatres than ever before, and in many other places than in theatres.” (Kershaw & Nicholson, p. 1) One could choose, in the right circumstances, to watch Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein by attending London’s National Theatre and see Cumberbatch, Miller, et al. perform live on stage as generations of theatre-going audiences have done before. However, thanks to the advent of recording technology, wireless internet, mobile devices, and streaming services, one could watch the same performance of Frankenstein in their own home, or at the beach, or on a train, or in any other setting one could reasonably choose.

To best showcase and understand the unique elements involved in staging science fiction productions, I deemed it necessary to stage an original science fiction work. Given the sparsity of academic materials existing regarding the topic of science fiction in theatre, I decided to gain experience in the field by staging my science fiction play (@lantis) for a public audience. I surveyed willing audience participants about their experience as consumers of the text. My two primary methodological approaches for

47 this exegesis are Practice as Research and Audience Reception Theory. In this chapter, I examine the critical components of these theories, how they relate to my research, and what they contribute to answering my central research questions about the role of science fiction in theatre and live performance, how the genre and medium benefit one another, and what can be achieved with science fiction on stage that cannot be achieved in other entertainment mediums.

Practice as Research

Practice as Research (or PaR) concerns the use of arts practices to facilitate and inform research in academic processes. Academic arts research uses the term in a variety of ways. Some researchers use the terms Practice-led Research (PLR) and Practice-based Research (PbR) interchangeably with PaR. To avoid any confusion going forward, I define my use of the term ‘PaR’ within this exegesis and explain how it differs from the afore-mentioned research methods of PLR and PbR.

I chose to integrate a PaR approach into my exegesis because my creative artefact is central to my research. Robin Nelson has written widely on the subject of PaR within the performing arts in his book Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (2013):

PaR involves a research project in which practice is a key method of inquiry and where, in respect of the arts, a practice (creative writing, dance, musical score/performance, theatre/performance, visual exhibition, film or other cultural practice) is submitted as substantial evidence of a research inquiry.

(Nelson, 2013, pp. 8-9)

Through @lantis, I was able to make many first-hand observations about staging science fiction productions that I would not have been able to witness otherwise. PaR permits including these experiences in academic discourse in meaningful ways.

PaR originated in Finland in the 1980s and since then it has grown in usage around the world and is now an established practice within arts-based academia. After initial scepticism towards this methodology, due in part to a perceived lack of credibility

48 towards researchers using first-hand experiences as evidence, this non-traditional methodology is now more readily and widely accepted. When PaR was a newer form of study, Nelson argued strongly in favour of academics allowing this form of work to be used by researchers:

In contrast to those sceptical scholars who dismiss, or look down upon, PaR as insubstantial and lacking in rigour, I recognize that PaR projects require more labour and a broader range of skills to engage in a multi-mode research inquiry than more traditional research processes and, when well done, demonstrate an equivalent rigour.

(Nelson, 2013, p. 9)

In the 2020s, PaR methodological approaches are now widely accepted due in part to a more frequent usage in art practice, and a growing recognition of the viability of this form of investigation.

I identify the research methodology I have engaged with as Practice as Research and not Practice-based Research (PbR) or Practice-led Research (PLR). However, there are similarities between all three, and practitioners use their terminology interchangeably. The critical differential factor is the role that practice plays within these methodologies. With PaR, the practice is the central method of investigation and the materials generated directly inform the outcome. The practice is the research; they are not separate entities, and the creative artefact generated by the researcher is of crucial importance to any new knowledge gathered. Practice-based Research uses a creative artefact as a foundation for the research; if that research provides original contributions to knowledge regarding the nature of the practice itself, it becomes Practice-led Research. (Candy, p.1)

PbR is similar to PaR, with the difference being that PbR outcomes are less dependent on the specifics of the creative artefact. The act of practice, more so than any specific artefacts generated, is what informs the investigation. The act can partly inform any research, discussions, or outcomes generated through PbR of practice, where “the creative work acts as a form of research.” (Dean & Smith, p. 5) They do not usually require the scope of reflective discussions that a PaR methodological approach does. The PLR methodology is more concerned with the nature of the practice itself. Any knowledge generated usually has a greater significance to the practice than to other 49 external inquiries, and “can lead to specialised research outputs which can then be generalised and written up as research.” (Dean & Smith, p. 5) As Nelson writes, “‘Practice-led’ may bear a residual sense that knowledge follows after, is secondary to, the practice which I know some of its users do not mean to imply.” (Nelson, p. 10) As the purpose of this exegesis is to facilitate knowledge generated by my creative artefact @lantis and apply it to the broader questions regarding science fiction in the theatre, a PLR approach would not be appropriate due to its focus (perceived or otherwise) on practice over knowledge.

Figure 1 - 'Modes of Knowing: multi-mode epistemological model for PaR', (Nelson, 2013, p.37) A fundamental model within Nelson’s version of PaR, and one which I apply within this exegesis, is the ‘Modes of Knowing’. This model is a multi-mode epistemological model of Arts Praxis – that formulates or ‘imbricates’ theory within the practice – and consists of three equal parts: ‘Know-how’, ‘Know-what’, and ‘Know-that’. The table above (Figure 1) demonstrates how Nelson’s model operates. Regarding his model, Nelson states:

It is specific to PaR in that practice is at its heart and it embraces modes of knowing (tacit, embodied-cognition, performative)

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only recently, but increasingly, acknowledged in ‘the academy’. But it is far from exclusive in that it reaches out to knowledge established by other methodologies, although it calls into question their assumption of supremacy.

(Nelson, 2013, p. 38)

Nelson suggests that the ‘Modes of Knowing’ model gives PaR the legitimacy some academics demand of methodological frameworks by using, where appropriate, knowledge generated through other forms of academic practice. This adherence to existing methodologies allows PaR practitioners to support any knowledge gained through practice with knowledge and theory already in academic circulation. In this exegesis, I support knowledge generated through developing the creative artefact (@lantis) with evidence from audience surveys that adheres to a model of Audience Reception Theory.

The three central tenets of Nelson’s ‘Modes of Knowing’ model are ‘Know-how’, ‘Know-what’, and ‘Know-that’, all of which cover the forms by which arts practitioners can comprehend the creative artefacts and performative works they generate. ‘Know- how’ refers to the tacit knowledge performers gain through the execution of their craft. Tacit knowledge includes the technical skills experienced performers develop that become second nature to them, such as the breathing techniques of singers, actors, and wind-instrument musicians. Nelson writes that:

There are two practical implications of ‘know-how’ that need highlighting in a PaR context. First, such knowledge is often taken for granted by arts practitioners and, second, beyond articulation in doing, much of it is not easy otherwise to make manifest. Indeed, one of the key challenges of PaR is to make the ‘tacit’ more ‘explicit’.

(Nelson, 2013, p. 43)

This focus on bringing such ‘inner knowledge’ to the forefront of academic study is essential for arts praxis to function in academic research. Experience and knowledge gained by artists reflect the culture of the arts communities they practice within and enhances our capacity to understand how we produce artistic works. Effective communication of these processes is vital within a PaR methodology.

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‘Know-what’ concerns the knowledge arts practitioners gain after critical reflection of their work. “The key method used to develop know-what from know-how is critical reflection – pausing, standing back, and thinking about what you are doing.” (Nelson, p. 44) ‘Know-how’, as previously discussed, refers to the methods and systems used by art practitioners in performing their craft, the tacit knowledge gained through experience and practice. ‘Know-what’ is an arts practitioners’ acknowledgement that a methodology they have critically reflected upon informs their processes. The third ‘Mode of Knowing’ – ‘Know-that’ – is an art practitioners’ understanding of why they used the methods they did in ‘Know-what’ phase. This chapter is an example of ‘Know- that’ in action: whereby I, the practitioner, extrapolate upon my practice to form an understanding of the practice itself.

With regards to my creative artefact @lantis, and the audience surveys conducted as part of the production process, the utilisation of a PaR methodological approach throughout its development was crucial. The surveys were designed to register the live audience’s experience with @lantis as a live performance work of theatre. Questions were included that engaged specifically with the survey responders’ ‘know-how’ and ‘know-what’ as both theatre consumers and science fiction consumers to ascertain what commonalities, if any, were present. These questions12 asked the survey responder to consider their own experience with theatre and with science fiction, before answering questions about specific elements of the episode of @lantis they had just seen and their reactions to it. As for @lantis, my previous consumption of science fiction texts across multiple entertainment mediums over my lifetime, as well as my participation in various science fiction creative works on stage and screen, informed my understanding of the science fiction genre. These experiences have helped formulate my tacit knowledge on the genre, my ‘know-how’. This is reflected in @lantis in a number of ways. Firstly, the use of intertextual references to other science fiction properties in the episodes. The allusions to the Alien film franchise in the first episode Fish Out of Water connected the events of the story to the sub-genre of science fiction

12 Questions three, five, and six from the @lantis audience survey seen in Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data: Question three: ‘Would you consider yourself a regular consumer of science fiction? Yes/No’, Question five: ‘Which entertainment mediums do you utilise to engage with Science Fiction texts? (E.G: Film, Television, Literature, Video Games, Podcasts, etc)’ Question six: ‘Approximately how many live theatre performances would you say you attend per annum? 1-2/3-6/7+’ 52 horror, as well as imbricating the performance of the cast with their own pre-existing knowledge of this genre. Murray Jackson – who played Professor Jules Quine in @lantis – is a fan of this sub-genre in film and comic book media, and his knowledge of these texts and the character archetypes within them informed his performance as a scientist attempting to stop the episode’s antagonistic Hybrid monster. This overlapped with how I wrote Jules for this episode, as a character who is unaware of the dangers inherent in the experiment that creates the creature to begin with, only to be forced into finding a solution to combat the threat for the sake of his own survival. Such scientist archetypes can be found in texts such as Jurassic Park (Dr John Hammond), and Frankenstein (Victor Frankenstein).

The ‘know-how’ brought to @lantis by the cast and crew is evident in many other areas, such as the tacit knowledge the performers brought to the production and gained through the execution of their craft. Actors modified their voices to sound like character archetypes they had encountered in other science fiction media, be that purely organically (such as Nic Doig’s deep vocals for the ‘friendly monster’ Lug) or a synthesis of organic and digital manipulation (Xarna Rappold – who played IRIS the Artificial Intelligence – performed her dialogue with an unnatural, neutral speech pattern that was then further altered by sound filters through her microphone). Even though I was not performing in an on-stage capacity as part of @lantis, elements of ‘Know-how’ informed my actions and decisions as both writer and director.

The narratives of @lantis featured several intertextual references to science fiction texts and other pop culture stories. I selected texts that came before @lantis in the general science fiction canon and worked in references to them to further the ongoing discussion of themes the genre generates.13 My knowledge and cultural understanding of certain types of non-science fiction texts also informed some of my creative choices. I primarily structured the episode Timeshare around murder mystery television programs such as Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989)14 and Midsomer Murders

13 Fish Out of Water contained numerous references to the Alien film series, IRIS evokes 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL9000 in Data Protection when she denies Jules access to the lab “I’m sorry Dad. I can’t let you do that.”, the Rattus Sapiens of A Dark World & The Year of the Long Tail were all named for other well-known rats from fiction or their authors, and so on. 14 A series of British television adaptations of the detective novels of the same name written by Agatha Christie. The series ran from 1989 until 2013, with David Suchet playing the eponymous Belgian investigator. 53

(1997).15 The audience has garnered certain expectations over the years of such programs: they begin with a murder, the victim has numerous people with motives to kill them nearby at the time of their death, red herrings, a femme fatale,16 and a final gathering of the suspects where the truth is revealed by the protagonist who has collected clues along the way and unravelled the mystery. Timeshare possessed all these elements, not because I had constructed a narrative that required such events to occur, but because of my knowledge – my Know-how – of murder mysteries. There was a final confrontation between Dorothy (in her role as the Poirot/Inspector Barnaby-like ‘Lead Investigator’) and Oscar Wilde’s clone (the murderer) in a large social setting (traditionally with all of the suspects gathered together in a parlour) because that is what almost always happens in murder mysteries. I could have resolved the episode in several different ways. Still, having established the episode as a homage to murder mysteries, it felt wrong to have the climax without the Investigator confronting the Murderer in such a setting.

This Know-how also influenced other areas of the production I oversaw, such as sound design. Frequently, when discussions between myself and the foley artists took place, we tried out different foley techniques for generating live sounds during the performances. I found myself on a couple of occasions saying things such as “It needs to sound more Sci-Fi”, and the foley artists understood what I meant. There is a shared catalogue of sounds we as media consumers possess when it comes to science fiction; a laser blaster should sound like they do in Star Wars and not like the revolvers or rifles from American Westerns, for example. If the Stormtroopers on the Death Star fired their fictional laser blasters and the resulting sound was similar to that of a contemporary assault rifle, it would result in the audience (consciously or sub-consciously) creating parallels between our world and the fantastical world of Star Wars. Science fiction texts in screen and sound media have long utilised unusual sound effects to create auditory dissonance between the world of the text and the world of the audience. Methods used to develop “Sci-Fi” sounds include synthetic artificially generated bleeps and bloops, wobbling metal sheeting, striking stretched aluminium coil wire with a hammer, or the

15 Another British television show based upon a series of novels, adapting Caroline Graham’s Chief Inspector Barnaby series. Midsomer Murders has been in production since 1997, with its 21st season being broadcast in January 2020. 16 A nod to the cinematic precursor of the television murder mystery – film noir. 54 layering of several disparate sound effects together. They are so widely utilised, so pervasive, that I could say “It needs to sound more Sci-Fi” and the foley artists understood my intention without additional context; the sounds needed to be more unusual and apart from our everyday world. We were utilising our knowledge of science fiction (Know What), formed through active participation and research in the genre (Know How), to engage with and critically reflect upon our art practice (Know That).

My reflections on performing in, writing, and directing other science fiction works informed my decision to write and stage the @lantis scripts as a radio play. The processes implemented during the preparations for script workshops and performer rehearsals for @lantis, are all part of my ‘know what’. The outsider knowledge that I gathered for @lantis as part of my research for the scripts, such as existing real-world scientific knowledge and theoretical work that informed the science of the world of the narrative, fits into the category of ‘know-that’. My experience of staging @lantis crossed over with these areas within my writing of the scripts, and my direction of the cast, predominantly during the rehearsal process. Having worked in professional theatre and performance since 2010, I have gathered knowledge of working, and cultural facets used when staging live performances. This general knowledge became my ‘Know-what’. It informed my ‘Know-that’ for many aspects of staging @lantis. ‘Know-that’ knowledge included how to direct the cast during rehearsals, how to hold the audition process and what I needed to look for from prospective actors, how I sourced crew members with the technical expertise to stage the production I had planned, and so on. These general practices associated with putting on a stage show inform the majority of a director’s role, regardless of the genre of the text being staged.

Key to forming my ‘Know-what’ with regards to my writing process for @lantis was my experience writing and directing my first science fiction play Thaw in 2015. In the eleven months between staging Thaw for the first time in August 2015 and the commencement of my PhD studies in July 2016, I spent that time reflecting on the production and my engagement within it. This practice was necessary to complete my Honours exegesis, which includes my findings from staging Thaw. My critical reflection continued after I submitted that paper for examination as well. Thaw was remounted and staged again at the 2016 Perth FRINGEWORLD festival with a few alterations. The script was slightly longer, two new actors replaced two of the original cast who were not

55 available for the FRINGEWORLD season, and because the performance took place in a larger theatre than the original production, it featured a new set design. Being able to enact the changes I had wanted to make so soon after the initial production was a fascinating experience. Nelson states that “the key method used to develop know-what from know-how is critical reflection – pausing, standing back, and thinking about what you are doing.” (Nelson, p. 44) Even in the relatively short time between the two productions of Thaw,17 and without knowledge of Nelson’s model at that time, I had engaged in the critical reflection that informs a Practice as Research methodology.

With a longer period of time to plan the production for my PhD study, I spent the first three to six months plotting out the production/productions. My experience with Thaw informed my decisions greatly; namely, I would not stage a ‘traditional’ theatrical show, by which I mean a play in which the performers play characters on a stage set up to look like the world they were inhabiting with an audience watching on. Thaw was staged in this style as a one-act, black box theatre performance with all the conventional practices of early twenty-first century theatre. I felt that it would achieve little to stage another production in this style when there are so many other forms of live performance through which to examine the science fiction genre. This realisation encouraged me to explore alternate forms of live theatrical performance and led to me selecting the style I wished to investigate: radio plays. This form of live performance, as well as another format that interested me but I chose not to utilise for the production (immersive theatre), are both discussed in Chapter Four – The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction.

The ‘Know-what’ I garnered from my time working on Thaw became the ‘Know- that’ which most affected how I wrote @lantis. In a Q&A session held after the first performance of Thaw, an audience member asked why I had written the show in such a comedic style. I responded that I had written most of the jokes out of the show and had not intended it to be ‘funny.’ Certainly, I had used humour in the script, with the climax of one of the main character’s narrative arc essentially being a punchline.18 However,

17 Around five months. 18 In Thaw, the first character the audience meets is James; a well-meaning but socially awkward man. He spends the entire play obscuring his reason for undergoing cryonic preservation, he will only say he has a degenerative auto-immune disorder. In the climax of a tense scene at the end of the play, where the seven characters only have six working cryo-pods and must decide who of them will not be re-preserved and left to die alone in a post-apocalyptic Earth, James is forced to reveal the nature of his condition in order to survive. His condition: he is going bald. He had frozen himself for the sake of his own vanity waiting for a cure for baldness. 56 the humour was used to frame an otherwise bleak and desperate narrative with levity and relief, out of my belief at the time, that people don’t come to the theatre to be miserable. I wanted them to remember their experience of being in the space with some degree of positivity, and for them not to believe that science fiction theatre – and indeed theatre created by myself – had to be an unenjoyable, depressing, or grim experience. The informal audience feedback from Thaw was that they enjoyed the humour and how it blended with a serious science fiction story. This encouraged me to write @lantis in much the same way; with humour interjected into narratives constructed from serious science fiction premises.

Iterative Cyclic Web

Australian academics Roger T. Dean and Hazel Smith developed the ICW model in Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (2010) as a framework that represents how creative works, research, practice-led research, and research-led practice interact with one another and inform the creative process. The ICW model is a more complex structure than Nelson’s ‘Modes of Knowing’ model, containing several smaller cycles which can loop indefinitely and as required to showcase the continual nature of how research and practice inform creative artefacts:

A creative or research process may start at any point on the large cycle illustrated and move, spider-like, to any other. Very important in the model, with regard to the sub-cycles, is the concept of iteration, which is fundamental to both creative and research processes. To iterate a process is to repeat it several times (though probably with some variation) before proceeding, setting up a cycle: start-end-start.

(Dean & Smith, 2010, p. 19)

The ICW model highlights the non-linear nature of the creative process. Multiple practices inform the outcome and the other processes themselves. For example, after I learnt there was significantly more plastic in the ocean than I initially thought, the information I gathered about the quantity of plastic in the real-world Great Pacific Garbage Patch led me to change the narrative of Episode Six of @lantis (Good Night, and Good Lug). One change this brought about was an increase in the size of the plastic

57 island built from ocean refuse that the characters visit. The new knowledge informed my changing the original concept of the lone inhabitant of the island to his having a crew of pirates, as the island’s dimensions could support multiple individuals. I changed the script to fit the narrative alteration, transforming from an exiled scientist into a pirate captain obsessed with collecting the chemical elements. This change of narrative to accommodate the outside research fits the ICW model, whereby “the creator must choose between the alternative results created by iteration, focusing on some and leaving others behind”. (Dean & Smith, p. 19)

As Figure 2 shows at the end of this sub-section, the ICW model is designed around the looping of practice and research informing and facilitating development of one another. The ICW model can be entered from various points and still function. My own entry point for @lantis was ‘Idea Generation’ between ‘Academic Research’ and ‘Practice-led Research’. I pursued the ‘Creative Practice’ approach (moving clockwise on the ICW model) in my initial construction of the scripts. The ICW model demonstrates how the creative process is further developed by the imbrication of ‘Academic Research’ and ‘Research-led Practice’ before the development of one of the possible outputs: the artwork itself. The ICW model also shows that creative development pushes back on the areas that influenced it and, in turn, influences non-Practice-led Research elements as well.

The ICW model also informed changes to my knowledge regarding the practice of creating and developing science fiction theatre. My academic research into the history of science fiction comedies influenced my decision to stage @lantis as a radio play instead of in another format. The origins of some of science fiction’s most critically acclaimed comedies such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf were in the radio format. An audio-dominant format allowed their authors a greater degree of freedom in the types of stories they could construct without requiring the costly and impractical visual fidelity audience were coming to expect from film and television science fiction in the 1970s and 1980s. I also wished to avoid similar production pitfalls with my production, and my research-led practice also informed this decision after my previous direction of a science fiction play, Thaw. Although that production achieved a

58 satisfactory level of visual quality,19 the narrative events occurred in a single location with only seven characters all in near-identical uniforms and few effects or elements that required complex changes mid-performance. By contrast, @lantis featured multiple locations (including tropical forests, submarine interiors, and the streets of a snowy Victorian-era London), a cast of more than seventy characters (several of whom were non-human) and bizarre scientific phenomenon (such as characters travelling through wormholes, a ‘Gastro-physics’ defence mechanism that makes people vomit instantly, and an island-destroying explosion), all of which would be difficult and impractical to replicate live on stage with the resources available to myself and the production team. Therefore, these factors formed from my academic research and research-led practice (as showcased on the ICW model) influenced my practice as a playwright and director.

The ICW model benefits those who wish to practice an interdisciplinary form of research. “Their (Dean & Smith’s) analysis and model reflects the multifarious kinds of interdisciplinary research that practice-led researchers actually do today, and also encourages alliances between research methods, disciplines and interdisciplines, through individual or collaborative projects.” (Messer, p.6) ICW encourages an interdisciplinary approach, which is useful to researchers who are examining multi- media integration and how research and practice influence one another. My creative work @lantis presented textual elements by using a multitude of different media practices: live theatre, radio/audio performance, audio effects, visual art, and video production. The ICW model allows me to examine the effects that these various performative models had on one another and on the creative artefact, as well as how the literary and academic aspect of my research informed my artistic practices.

19 The set of Thaw featured a large rotating ‘Thermal Awakener’ in which the actors entered and exited a state of cryonic preservation, complete with operational LED lighting, smoke effects, and operational digital displays. 59

Figure 2 - ‘The Iterative Cyclic Web of practice-led research and research-led practice’ (Dean & Smith, 2010, p. 20)

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Audience Reception Theory

Audience Reception Theory (ART) regards the practice by producers of creative works whereby they encode meanings and values within their texts, which the audience can interpret. Before the development of ART, questions around the importance of the theatre were being asked and considered: “Can theatre exist without an audience? At least one spectator is needed to make it a performance.” (Grotowski, p. 32) “It is with the spectator, in brief, that theatrical communication begins and ends.” (Elam, p. 59) ART emerged from the work of a British sociologist named Stuart Hall, whose essay Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973) proposed a theory that messages are disseminated to television audiences to interpret independently using codified media conventions such as semiotics:

Though we know the television programme is not a behavioural input, like a tap on the knee cap, it seems to have been almost impossible for traditional researchers to conceptualize the communicative process without lapsing into one or other variant of low-flying behaviourism. We know, as Gerbner has remarked, that representations of violence on the TV screen ‘are not violence but messages about violence': but we have continued to research the question of violence, for example, as if we were unable to comprehend this epistemological distinction.

(Hall, 1973, p. 5)

Hall’s theory breaks down the way audiences decode messages in texts into three forms: the dominant-hegemonic position where audience members decode the messages presented “in terms of the reference-code in which it has been coded, we might say that the viewer is operating inside the dominant code” (Hall, p. 16); the negotiated code, which recognizes definitions generated by the dominant-hegemonic position but can establish its definitions with regards to ‘local positions’ relating to the circumstances of the audience (Hall, p. 17); and the oppositional code in which the audience member understands the text’s literal message and decodes it via an alternative framework to garner a different, often contradictory, understanding. (Hall, p. 18) These codes have developed alongside the establishment and growth of each entertainment medium. They have been integrated into our collective cultural canon which informs how we interpret additional meanings within particular genres of text. “Appropriate decodification of a given text derives above all from the spectator’s familiarity with other 61 texts (and thus with learned textual rules).” (Elam, p. 57) The act of decoding messages within entertainment texts has become more commonplace during the development of the mediums of television and film, and decoding can be pleasurable to those audience members who choose to do it. (Elam, p. 58)

Since Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, ART has developed and applied to entertainment mediums other than television. In Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (1997), Susan Bennett adapts Hall’s concept for stage productions and argues that ART is of greater importance to the medium of theatre than that of film, television, and literature; where participation by the audience is passive and cannot affect the performance article. For her “the audience of even the most ‘culinary’ theatre is involved in a reciprocal relationship.” (Bennett, pp. 20-21) Given that the audience shares the performance environment with the artistic practitioners and can have an impact on the performances from show to show, understanding such effects is necessary to any academic inquiry on the matter. The application of ART to the theatre is valid and useful for understanding artistic practitioners’ activities, the nature of the creative artefacts, and their ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ in the critical perceptions of their audiences.

ART is an appropriate methodology for this exegesis as I assert that to understand science fiction’s lack of notable critical or commercial successes in the theatre, ascertaining how theatre audiences interpret texts differently than audiences for other entertainment mediums is essential. What are the expectations we, as consumers, have of theatre and the science fiction genre? Do these expectations gel harmoniously, or do they clash with a cultural dissidence that makes science fiction on stage unappealing?

The matter of communication between the performers and the audiences is a central facet of ART-related theatre studies. A theatrical audience, because of their physical presence in the performance space, engages with the text less passively than that of a cinematic, literary, and televisual audience. Bennet talks of the medium of theatre and its operational procedures creating a ‘theatrical event’; a unique environment in which the surroundings and atmosphere in which the audience consumes the text as being as important as the content of the text itself:

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Established cultural markers are important in pre-activating a certain anticipation, a horizon of expectations, in the audience drawn to any particular event. Multiple horizons of expectations are bound to exist within any culture and these are, always, open to renegotiation before, during and after the theatrical performance. The relationship then between culture and the idea of the theatrical event is one that is necessarily flexible and inevitably rewritten on a daily basis.

(Bennett, 1997, pp. 105-106)

There is little else in other popular entertainment mediums that compares to the ‘theatrical event’. Films, upon their release, are generally screened in cinemas with their own cultural practices and atmospheres within which their audiences engage. However, these audiences cannot affect the performances in the same manner as in live theatre. The film actor delivers their lines the same way every time, regardless of how the viewer feels: “The literary as well as the filmic text is a fixed and finished product which cannot be directly affected by its audiences.” (Bennett, p. 20) The theatre actor can have their performance impacted by numerous factors, including the responses, reactions, and presence of an audience. The performance in theatre can be changed by the audience, making each show a unique work: “No two theatrical performances can ever be the same precisely because of this audience involvement.” (Bennett, p. 21) Elam suggests this involvement is derived directly from the interaction between the performer and the presence of an audience: “Spectator-performer communication will affect, if nothing else, the degree of the actor’s commitment to his work.” (Elam, p. 59) If we view performance as communication, a filmed performance is akin to a pre-prepared speech delivered at a press conference. In contrast, a theatrical performance has more in common with a conversation between the practitioner and the observer.

The audience as an entity is becoming increasingly divided in other entertainment mediums. Growing accessibility to sophisticated visual displays and sound system technologies on the domestic front allows the consumer to reproduce facsimiles of the cinematic experience within their own homes. However, such practices negate the shared viewing experience on offer in their local multiplex. Television in the latter half of the twentieth century had its own culture based around the scheduling of broadcasts:

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Common national carriage of popular television shows, news and sports events meant that there was a shared national experience. The day after major televised events, researchers found that almost everyone was talking about the event. They weren't saying the same things, but there was a sense of national dialog.

(Ganzel, 2007)

Individual audience members had to be in front of a television at specific times to see the latest episode of serialised programs or miss out on the event and the subsequent social practice of the ‘water-cooler conversations’ that ensued in the days after the broadcast. Technological developments have disrupted this practice. Home recording devices in the 1980s and 1990s, recordable digital television in the 2000s, and the proliferation of streaming services in the 2010s all contributed to fracturing this televisual social homogony. Theatre and other live performance arts’ audiences remain mostly unaffected by such technological advances, although the last decade has seen more rapid changes than in previous time periods.

An area where the consumption of theatre is being affected by emergent entertainment technologies is that of the screening or ‘live streaming’ of theatrical performances. Institutions such as the Royal National Theatre in London and the Sydney Opera House have screened recorded versions of their shows to select cinemas around the globe. The Royal National Theatre and the Sydney Opera House do this to allow those without the means to be physically present within the audience at the time to experience the performances. It is good business practice for these highly regarded institutions to showcase a polished presentation of what they have to offer, as it advertises themselves to the viewer who may choose to attend a live performance in the future, provided that they are in a position to do so. This attitude of inclusivity towards geographically isolated or excluded audience members does come at a potential cost for these viewers who are missing out on the full theatrical experience; the communication with performers through, and participation in, attending a live performance. Martin Barker discusses this participation – or ‘liveness’ as he terms it – in his contribution to The Audience Experience: a critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts (2013):

In theatre and performance studies, then, ‘liveness’ comes with an imprimatur of importance – many practitioners insisting that

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it is key to the meaning and purpose of their work. […] But this insistence has been coloured by intense debates over a number of things: the politics of different performance styles and traditions, the penetration of technologies of production and reproduction in theatres, and the relations with other media such as television.

(Barker, 2013, p. 19)

The ‘liveness’ of theatrical performances is a central area of inquiry in my research with my creative artefact, @lantis. I constructed the text with two audience types in mind; the live theatrical performance audience – who would experience the ‘liveness’ Barker discusses, and the online audio audience – who engage with edited audio recordings of the live performances presented as audio dramas. As the audio audience listened to an amalgamation of the audio from the two live performances (edited into as high-quality performance as possible), the audio version might be considered the superior form of @lantis. These episodes contain fewer mistakes from actors and crew members, and the scenes chosen are the ones which, in the opinion of myself as writer and director, are the best performed. However, the audio audience does not engage with the show’s ‘liveness’ in the way that the theatrical audiences did. They do not get to participate in that conversation between the performers and the audience; they only get to read the transcript afterwards. ‘Liveness’ can be as significant to theatrical science fiction texts as it can be to other genres and missing out on participating in it as an audience member can have a notable impact on the enjoyment of and interest in the text.

This ‘liveness’ is an important factor for many who choose to go to the theatre. Attending the theatre is as much a part of the entertainment derived from the experience as the performance itself. The live nature of the performance coupled with the social experience of sharing that work with an audience enhances the artform, allowing all who partake in it to “share experiences of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world.” (Dolan, p.2) My experiences of ‘Liveness’ in theatrical performance extends to my observations as an audience member, for both science fiction and non- science fiction productions. I have attended screenings from National Theatre Live at Luna Palace Cinemas in Fremantle, Western Australia; seeing a variety of productions including Frankenstein (2011), Amadeus (2017), Salomé (2017), and Follies (2017). The high quality of these recordings

65 and productions partly influenced my decision to attend a performance of Hadestown (2018) at the Royal National Theatre when I was in London during December 2018. The differences between these two types of audience, as well as a discussion on whether or not this technological global inclusivity affects our capacity to engage with theatrical performances (and our readings thereof), are discussed in further detail in Chapter Seven – Discussions and Findings.

@lantis was written to be performed to a live theatrical audience to evaluate the general public may receive science fiction texts. As a radio play, it would have been acceptable for the whole project to be created inside a recording studio, allowing the performers and sound engineers multiple attempts to create the best possible auditory performance. However, I wanted to showcase the performances to an audience as a theatrical piece to demonstrate that such works could be staged effectively and be positively received. Applying an ART methodological approach to my study, which includes the audience survey (the results of which are discussed in chapters six and seven), allowed me to examine the audience of the creative artefact and the impact they had upon one another in both the theatrical and audio formats.

Summary of Approaches

The approach to my research has been through the methodological focus of Practice as Research, Iterative Cyclic Web, and Audience Reception Theory. The process of creating and staging my creative artefact @lantis was my primary form of research into the viability of, and practices inherent within, science fiction theatre. This practice forms the bulk of my research into science fiction on the stage, so it is most accurately defined as belonging to PaR. I utilised Dean and Smith’s ‘Iterative Cyclic Web’ model to showcase how academic and non-academic research and practical knowledge, gathered through my previous work in theatre, informed my decisions; specifically decisions relating to the construction of the scripts and production/design elements for @lantis. The subsequent findings from the performances of @lantis, including the audience survey results, focuses on how audiences consume science fiction productions on stage in comparison to other theatrical productions, as well as science fiction texts staged in different entertainment mediums. As such, ART is an important methodological

66 approach for my exegesis. In the next chapter, I use these methodologies to examine the development of science fiction on the stage by exploring the genre’s theatrical genealogy and its development in other entertainment mediums.

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Chapter Four – The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction

This chapter presents a detailed timeline of the development of the science fiction genre across all entertainment mediums and specifically within the theatre. It includes a discussion of how adaptations of existing science fiction texts in other mediums have been staged in the theatre, and how and where original works of science fiction theatre have been produced in the twenty-first century. This chapter concludes with explorations of four areas of non-traditional theatrical practice that could be of benefit to science fiction theatre: radio plays, virtual/augmented reality, immersive experiences, and the use of Robots and Artificial Intelligences as actors and/or performers. The discussion informs my central research aims by examining theatrical production methods that showcase what live performance can achieve for science fiction that cannot be achieved or easily replicated in other entertainment mediums.

Introduction

Science fiction has not been a hugely successful genre within the theatre with regards to critical appraisal or commercial revenue, but it does have an extensive history of productions dating back to the nineteenth century. Reasons for science fiction’s lack of critical or commercial impact in the theatre include high production costs, prohibitive technological requirements, and a deficit of science fiction authors writing stage plays. Theatrical practitioners’ lack of interest in science fiction stories adds to this lack of critical acceptance. Ralph Willingham cites theatrical practitioners’ lack of knowledge about science fiction as a key factor in the genre’s struggle:

One possibility is that theatre artists, like most uninitiated people, tend to lump all science fiction into a general category of escapist literature. Indeed, the commercial nature of the science fiction publishing industry is largely to blame for this stigma. The bulk of the genre's literature is still the same gadget- and adventure-oriented fluff which formed the basis of its definition and growth in the 1930s. Very often, however, science-fiction writers have the same underlying purpose as dramatists. They employ a science-fictional premise to provide a new perspective on the same problems which have been the stuff of great drama for centuries.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 6)

Willingham lays the blame for science fiction’s failure with two groups: theatre artists who do not understand what science fiction is, and those science fiction authors and

69 publishers who continue to release stories that would not be out of place in Gernsback’s era. I argue that science fiction’s lack of prominence on stage is due more to theatre artists and practitioners failing to utilise the genre effectively than the failings of science fiction authors. In this chapter, I examine these factors by establishing a timeline of the science fiction theatre canon and compare it to the development of science fiction across other entertainment mediums. Within the theatre, I examine original works written for the stage and adaptations of existing works from other mediums, pinpointing the reasons for the positive and negative reactions to productions of science fiction on stage. I then examine three sub-sections of theatrical practice in greater detail that provide interesting options for theatrical practitioners with an interest in science fiction live performance: Theatre and Radio Plays, Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality experiences, and using Robots and Artificial Intelligences as actors and performers. Through these examinations, I will showcase some of what the medium of theatre can do for science fiction storytelling that other entertainment mediums cannot.

Pre-Nineteenth Century – Voyages to the Moon

In Science Fiction and the theatre, Willingham provides an appendix of more than three-hundred science fiction productions, dating between 1875 and 1991. He also acknowledges that science had worked its way into the theatre almost two-hundred years before the oldest production cited in his appendix:

Theatre audiences were laughing at science as early as 1676 when the Duke’s Company presented Thomas Shadwell’s play The Virtuoso at London’s Covent Garden theatre. The Royal Society and its quest for scientific knowledge suffered ridicule in the comic character of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, who boasted:

“I am so much advanc’d in the art of flying that I can already outfly that ponderous animal call’d a bustard, nor should any greyhound in England catch me in the calmest day before I get upon wing. Nay, I doubt not but in a little time to improve the art so far, ’twill be as common to buy a pair of wings to fly to the world in the moon as to buy a pair of wax boots to ride into Sussex with.”

(Willingham, 1994, p. 22)

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In the twenty-first century, we can find some humour in the fact that people such as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flew to the moon but almost certainly did not “buy a pair of wax boots to ride into Sussex with.” It is interesting to note that the initial depictions of science and scientists in the theatre were not complimentary. Willingham details a few pre-twentieth century plays and operas20 in which scientific dreamers are mocked and derided, usually through trickery based upon their scientific obsessions in a manner not dissimilar to Malvolio’s cross-gartered deception in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1602). Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1592) is yet more hostile towards the learned scientist figure, as discussed by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr in Science on Stage: “Science itself, or the scientist, becomes the embodiment of the problem, not just a metaphor for it. The problem of human overreaching, of trying to know too much, is personified in the figure of Faustus.” (Shepherd-Barr, p. 16) This hostility towards the sciences, however jovial, tongue-in-cheek, or serious, was not a promising start to how theatrical practitioners viewed the subject matter.

Away from the stage, the concept of a fiction based upon the sciences was starting to develop. Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) is considered by some to be a forerunner to the science fiction genre.21 In Utopia, More writes himself into the narrative as the protagonist meeting with a fictional traveller named Raphael Hythloday, who tells him of a faraway land called Utopia where the property is communal, and everyone works collectively. More and Hythloday debate whether Utopia or Europe has the better social system and discuss a wide range of topics: including slavery, practising religious beliefs, crime, euthanasia, and the right of an individual to privacy. While some might argue that Utopia is more a philosophy text than it is a science fiction narrative, a social science fiction if you will, Utopia deals with one of the most pervasive ideas explored in science fiction texts: the concept of utopian and dystopian societies. More’s fictional country of Utopia is the precursor to science fiction texts in which manipulations of science and technology shape society itself; such as the London of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the city of Metropolis in Fritz Lang’s film of the same name, and the nation of Oceania in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Whatever his intentions when writing Utopia, More could not have known that he was laying the

20 The Emperor of the Moon (1687), The World of the Moon (1777), and Tales of Hoffman (1881). 21 Including The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, which lists Utopia as the oldest science fiction text in a list of science fiction literature. 71 foundations for a cornerstone of science fiction literature for the next five hundred years.

Nineteenth Century – Frankenstein on Stage

Willingham cites the productions most at fault for the low standard of science fiction drama before the twentieth century as the stage adaptations of Frankenstein that began in England in the 1820’s. The first such production was staged in 1823, just five years after the publication of the original novel. Richard Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein (1823) was not a production that attempted to faithfully re-create the novel. Instead, Peake chose to tell the tale in the framework of the theatrical customs of the day:

This play is a melodrama, with all the action squeezed into twenty-four hours and three acts. To accomplish this compression, Peake stripped away all the soul-searching that makes Mary Shelley’s novel such a haunting psychological adventure. Captain Walton’s Arctic rescue of the physically and spiritually wrecked Frankenstein, the Creature's tale of its intellectual growth, and the tormented spiritual bond between Creator and Creature are eliminated from Peake’s play. What remains is a curious mixture of thrills and arias. Almost every character in the play stops the action to render a song filled with flowery philosophy.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 24)

It is perhaps overly cruel to say that Peake’s decision to adapt Frankenstein into a musical melodrama was a mistake. The concept of a singing Victor Frankenstein and a dancing Creature have subsequently proven themselves to be effective, if somewhat comedic, methods of re-telling their story.22 Adaptations of original works that apply new frameworks or methodologies can breathe new life into stories with which audiences are familiar. But in taking away the central themes of the original text, the purpose and meaning Shelley put into Frankenstein may well be lost on the audiences that only see the stage production.

22 As evidenced in Mel Brooks’ 1974 film Young Frankenstein, which spawned a musical stage production of the same name in 2007. 72

Throughout the nineteenth century, Frankenstein was adapted repeatedly to the stage, often from pre-existing play scripts instead of from the source material. These shows began to influence audiences’ expectations of the text. With each adaptation, Willingham notes, new elements added by theatre directors replaced older themes from the novel. These productions became simplifications of Shelley’s novel:

Burlesques of Shelley’s novel continued throughout the century. But in none of them did the Creature appear as Shelley had conceived it. Along the way, Frankenstein was given an assistant, his laboratory acquired machinery, and the creature became less and less human. This long series of theatrical distortions of Shelley’s novel permanently altered public perception of her Creature from an intelligent being in search of its destiny, into a pathetic, brutish killer conceived in a sinister laboratory during a thunderstorm by a crazed scientist and his hunchbacked assistant. As Steven Earl Forry has demonstrated in his study Hideous Progenies (1990), when Universal Studios produced the cult film Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff in 1931, it was not the novel, but the plays which influenced the film script. Thus the theatre is responsible for perpetuating the misconceptions which continue to surround the first science-fiction novel.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 25-26)

This perpetuation of misconceptions demonstrates that these science fiction plays were influential enough to impact people working in the film industry to follow their lead on how to depict Frankenstein, but also that such depictions were flawed for what they added to or removed from the original text. Such issues exist across all genres when it comes to adapting a text to be performed in a different entertainment medium. Shelley did not write Frankenstein for the stage, and she certainly did not write it to be projected in cinemas over a century later; she had no idea such technologies would come to be. Shelley wrote Frankenstein for people to read.

The problem with adaptations, particularly with adapting literature into film, theatre, or other mediums, is choosing what gets removed or left out. Literature does not possess the same limits on content that most other entertainment mediums do. Films and plays rarely exceed three hours in length and are usually designed to tell their tales in a single sitting, whereas the reader reads at their convenience. The original text of Frankenstein has a word count of over 70,000. Contrast this with the average word

73 counts of a film script (7,500 – 20,000 words) or a play script (5,000 – 10,000 words)23 and it becomes evident that something must be removed when adapting a novel to these formats. The question for those making the adaptions becomes what to keep and what to cut. Frankenstein does not lend itself to a clean theatrical adaptation. Victor recounts most of the events from his perspective or from second-hand accounts other characters provide in letters about what they have heard of relevant events from Victor. Not only do we have to question the narrative truth of the events, but there is only a small amount of dialogue between characters with which a playwright could adapt lines of dialogue for performers to orate.

The reason I have focused on Frankenstein productions to begin with is due to their prevalence in the field of science fiction theatre. Willingham dedicates a whole chapter of Science Fiction and the Theatre to dramatic adaptations of Frankenstein. He details their varying degrees of critical and commercial success and discusses the consequences that the early melodramatic re-telling had on warping the public’s understanding of Shelley’s central message:

What makes Frankenstein a great science-fiction story is a great science-fictional novum: what if man acquired the power to create life? Would he make a man better than God's, or one equally flawed? Would his reaction to his handiwork reflect God’s reaction to His? Does man suffer, as Frankenstein's Creature suffers, because God is disgusted with man and has turned His back on him? Frankenstein retains relevance today because mankind’s scientific advances have not made him a better creature.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 268-269)

This central novum, of mankind playing the role of Creator/God, is one of the most utilised narratives within science fiction. Indeed, it is a narrative that pre-dates science fiction by several millennia, going back as far as the development of Greek mythology. Some of the most notable science fiction plays discussed later in this chapter are riffs on this same theme, re-telling Shelley’s story with a different focus. The Blue Flame examines playing God through a prism of religious morality. At the same time, The Rocky Horror Show mirrors the story beats of Hollywood adaptations of Frankenstein to tell a

23 These average word count figures were taken from the Tameri Publications guide for writers: http://www.tameri.com/format/wordcounts.html 74 story about sexuality, desire, and power. As I discuss later in this chapter (see Early Twenty-First Century – All the Worlds on Stage) theatrical productions of Frankenstein between 2010 and 2019 have sought to bring more of the novel’s original thematic elements into their productions to reflect contemporary social issues. Despite the issues its early adaptations created for the public’s understanding of the original text, Frankenstein has found a way to flourish in the theatre, unlike many other science fiction texts.

Early Twentieth Century – Robots & Radios

Frankenstein aside, very few science fiction novels were adapted to the stage in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were exceptions, such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887), released one year after the book’s publication. Still, by and large, science fiction theatre up until the 1950s was primarily the domain of original works. It was not until the 1920s that the genre had its first notable original text published and performed on stage: Rosumovi Univerzalni Roboti.24 Karel Capek set the play inside a factory where the titular Rossum’s (an uncle and nephew partnership) built artificial people called ‘roboti’ (or ‘robots’) to act as a slave labour force for humanity.25 Over the course of the narrative, the robots become aware that they are stronger than their human masters and rebel, wiping out humanity and becoming the dominant species on Earth.

Willingham cites two other significant science fiction productions from the 1920’s that along with R.U.R. introduced “conventions which would become staples of science fiction as the genre developed in the 1930s and 1940s” (p.28): Back to Methuselah (1922) and Wings over Europe (1928). Both productions utilised a scientific factor as their novum; Back to Methuselah explored the concept of evolution in a world where humanity gained immortality, while Wings over Europe considered the political and social consequences of mankind developing nuclear super-weapons. It is important to note that Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne wrote Wings over Europe seventeen

24 We know it better in English by its translated title Rossum’s Universal Robots. 25 The older Uncle Rossum discovered the method by which the roboti could be created from a chemical protoplasm, and the younger nephew Rossum monetised this by creating the roboti as a form of serf- labour available for purchase. 75 years before the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Neither play was as well received critically as R.U.R., which Willingham suggests was because:

(Back to Methuselah) is an unusually lengthy and discursive play, audiences and critics have usually found it tedious. Consequently, Back to Methuselah has seldom been produced since its premiere.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 33)

Even in 1928 the flaws in Wings Over Europe were obvious. Lightfoot’s lorry accident was an absurdity which the Theatre Guild saw fit to eliminate by having one of the ministers shoot the young man as he returns to the Cabinet Room. In addition, Lightfoot’s portrayal as a borderline psychotic was an unfair slander of the scientific community. As critic Francis R. Bellamy pointed out, "the scientific mind which would have discovered such a key to the universe is not usually of the kind which concerns itself with grandiose schemes for Utopias." The authors’ notions about atomic science also raised a few critical eyebrows. In an offstage demonstration, Lightfoot impresses the ministers by detonating a lump of sugar and creating a huge crater, and by turning a latch key first into gold, then into a lump of rubber.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 33)

These missteps are somewhat forgivable. Science fiction in the 1920s was still discovering what it was. The playwrights, authors, and filmmakers who were generating the science fiction works of the early twentieth century could only find out what the boundaries of acceptability were through practice. Through trying out different concepts in their works and seeing how audiences reacted to them, they could uncover the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of telling science fiction stories.

Wings Over Europe demonstrated that as audiences were becoming more educated about the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology through the increasing number of technological advances, they were also becoming more critical about authors playing fast-and-loose with scientific fact. Willingham cites the impact of magazine series like Gernsback’s Amazing Stories for helping develop the seriousness authors and readers started to apply to science fiction tales:

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These magazines were the principal reason why science-fiction stories matured into high-quality literature in the 1950s, while science-fiction drama faded. Gernsback created a subculture of fans who corresponded with him, started clubs, published newsletters and science- fiction periodicals known as "fanzines," and spread the popularity of science fiction. Later, John W. Campbell’s editorship of Astounding Stories added the element of quality which Gernsback’s literature lacked. Eventually the pulps developed a national audience, encouraged competition from other magazines and, consequently, created a market for better writers.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 37-38)

The demand for better science fiction stories that came with the development of the genre during the twentieth century encouraged a generation of authors to write bold, new stories. As it was the science fiction magazines pushing this discourse, authors wrote most of these exciting new texts for the medium of literature. I examine these developments later in this chapter (see Mid Twentieth Century – The Golden Age of Science Fiction).

1920 was an important year for science fiction theatre, for it saw not only the debut of R.U.R. but also the debut of the genre’s first significant theatrical flop: The Blue Flame. The play follows John Varnum, an agnostic scientist who discovers a way to bring the recently deceased back to life. Varnum uses this discovery to raise his girlfriend, Ruth Gordon from the dead after she is struck by lightning. However, the re-animated Ruth has no soul and spends the rest of the play committing various sins and vices of increasing severity. The play ends with the revelation that Varnum’s reanimation of Ruth was all a dream, warning him not to play God. Varnum destroys his machine and embraces religion. The Blue Flame has some apparent similarities to the narrative of Frankenstein but differs in the delivery of the central theme of playing God. While Frankenstein was an introspective examination of what it means for mortals to have powers akin to those of higher deities,26 The Blue Flame came down squarely on the side of ‘people should not play God.’ The science fiction elements of the script are almost entirely abandoned after the first act for a more puritanical morality story, with Ruth’s misbehaviour attributed to the absence of a belief-based soul, not any scientific

26 Let us not forget the novel’s secondary title is The Modern Prometheus. 77 phenomenon. Despite featuring the silent-film era star Theda Bara in the leading role of Ruth, The Blue Flame was overwhelmingly panned by the critics upon its debut on Broadway in March 1920. The Sun and New York Herald called it “abysmal in intelligence and all that touches the art of the theatre. […] Only at rare intervals was “The Blue Flame” ridiculous enough in its serious scenes to be laughed at heartily. Usually, it was merely dull.” (“Miss Bara Fails: ‘The Blue Flame’ Lacks in Thrills”, 1920) The Blue Flame ran for forty-eight performances before closing on Broadway the following month.

Willingham mentions The Blue Flame, and other contemporary science fiction theatrical failures Night Hawk (1925) and The House of Doom (1932), as examples of science fiction texts that suffered from the unique influence of an inhibiting factor in theatre culture; the scorn of the theatre critic:

The science fiction of the Broadway theatres was no worse than many stories in Gernsback’s magazines. The difference was that the pulp stories did not come under such critical scrutiny, and readers did not consult critics before buying the magazines. On the other hand, an evening at the theatre was an expensive investment during the Depression. Audiences were more reluctant than ever to attend a play which received poor reviews.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 39)

Criticism of theatrical productions tends to be more intensive than that within other entertainment mediums. Experimental productions can be divisive for audiences and critics alike, evoking stronger reactions both positive and negative. Given the influence the theatre critic possesses (particularly within theatrical hotbeds like Broadway and the West End), a strongly negative review can impact the work in question, as well as the future careers of the cast and crew. Garnering a reputation for putting on bad shows could end careers, which generated a culture within theatrical circles of playing it safe.

Science fiction texts were still an oddity in the 1930s, and there was little-to- nothing in the way of a discourse of ideas regarding story-telling or methods of staging science fiction productions amongst the theatre practitioners of the day. The theatre, at that time, was not an environment in which new or experimental works had the same room to grow and adapt as in the magazines. The risks inherent with staging works from an emerging genre made science fiction an unappealing prospect:

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The cost of producing a play was becoming an increasingly risky financial venture, to the extent that theatres depended more than ever on a long run to recoup expenses. Consequently, backers looked for popular plays which could pack the house for many performances. Whereas pulp publishers could easily make a profit on cheap journals containing the amateurish science- fiction prose of poorly-paid writers, the science-fiction dramas of the period appeared on the same big-city stages of New York and Europe as any other plays, where they received the same critical scrutiny. Usually, they quickly succumbed to a barrage of contempt.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 37-38)

In this environment, where the risks of failure could lead to catastrophic consequences for the careers and prospects of theatrical practitioners, it is not surprising that the science fiction genre developed away from the stage in other entertainment mediums. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, fiscal concerns overruled all else in the management of theatres. Safe, well-known texts became the only viable options, and emerging science fiction texts were ignored and largely forgotten.

Mid Twentieth Century – The Golden Age of Science Fiction

While the theatrical endeavours of the science fiction genre struggled to gain a foothold in the middle of the twentieth century, science fiction literature entered its so- called ‘Golden Age.’ Adam Roberts, a British science fiction novelist and author of The History of Science Fiction (2006), identifies the Golden Age of science fiction as occurring approximately between 1940 and 1960. Roberts credits John W. Campbell, a science fiction author and the editor of the magazine series Astounding Stories27 as a key figure in ushering in the ‘Golden Age’:

He was a proactive editor, with very definitive ideas of what constituted a good story, unafraid to press authors into revisions, to revise their work himself without their say-so, or often simply to reject, in the service of a Platonic ideal SF story. A thumbnail definition of Golden Age SF might be ‘that period when the genre

27 Not to be confused with Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. Astounding Stories was a rival publication launched in 1930 to compete with Gernsback’s magazine. 79

was dominated by the sorts of stories that appeared in Campbell’s Astounding from the late 1930s into the 1950s’.

(Roberts, 2006, p. 195)

Campbell’s impact on science fiction was notable beyond his literary works.28 He took the simplistic stories of moon-men and rocket ships of the pulp fiction era and demanded a higher quality of story-telling, holding authors to account when he found their narratives wanting. Gary Westfahl, writing in his book The Mechanics of Wonder: the Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (1998), praised the impact Campbell had on elevating the standards of science fiction literature:

Campbell retained and restated the essential elements in Hugo Gernsback’s theory of science fiction, reformed and added to some of those elements, and incorporated ideas and improvements from other sources. In essence, he repaired Gernsback’s ideas; and I maintain that it was primarily by means of his critical work – not his writing or editing – that Campbell had a major impact on the genre and became, after Gernsback, the second most important figure in the development of science fiction.

(Westfahl, 1998, p. 179)

This development of a critical view of what was and was not ‘good science fiction’ from an editor in a position of influence led to stronger narratives, or at least narratives more in line with Campbell’s vision of ‘good’ science fiction. A new style of science fiction was developing, what some today call ‘Hard Sci-Fi’ (Roberts, p. 195), where the narrative events were less like the daring adventures of Jules Verne narratives and more inclined towards exploring the consequences of the actions on the individuals. Westfahl quotes Campbell himself on how the tastes of science fiction readers were changing towards the latter approach:

In older science fiction, the Machine and the Great Idea predominated. Modern readers – and hence editors! – don’t want that; they want stories of people living in a world where a Great Idea, or a series of them, and a Machine, or machines, form

28 His 1938 novella Who Goes There? was adapted into screenplays for The Thing from Another World (1951) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), both of which are considered important works in the science fiction film canon. 80

the background. But it is the man, not the idea or machine that is the essence.

(Westfahl, 1998, p. 182)

This introspective self-reflection on the human elements of science fiction texts became common in the subsequent science fiction literature of the era. Authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke put the struggles of the individual, and the causes of those struggles coming from the science fiction elements that surround or influence them, front and centre in their narratives.

What then was the impact that this increasing quality in science fiction storytelling had on the popularity of science fiction in the theatre? It was minimal. Writers of science fiction literature at this time, particularly Ray Bradbury, did attempt to bring more complex tales to the stage. Between the 1950’s and 1970’s, Bradbury adapted a number of his science fiction literature29 (such as Fahrenheit 451) into stage plays but with little critical or commercial success. Science fiction remained largely absent from the theatrical spotlight. Willingham’s appendix of science fiction theatrical productions in Science Fiction and the Theatre lists several original staged works and adaptations in this period – including George Bernard Shaw with Farfetched Fables (1948). However, none of these productions could be argued effectively to have made a lasting contribution to the wider canon of science fiction in general.

Late Twentieth Century – The Cinema Strikes Back

The next notable original work of science fiction theatre that made an impact away from the stage was Richard O’Brien’s 1973 musical The Rocky Horror Show, which was discussed in detail in the Introduction chapter. I touch on it here to examine what came along in its wake. Science fiction musicals and comedies started to become more commonplace in the 1970’s and 1980’s across different entertainment mediums. One of the more noteworthy productions of this period was Elaine Lee’s Starstruck: A Space Opera (1980) – a feminist comedy set in the middle of a Star Wars style galactic war –

29 Bradbury argued that most of his works were fantasy and not science fiction. The exception was Fahrenheit 451: “I write fantasy. The only science fiction I have written is Fahrenheit 451. It's the art of the possible. […] It could happen. It has happened.” ('A Conversation with Ray Bradbury (2001)' Retrieved from https://cosmolearning.org/videos/a-conversation-with-ray-bradbury-2001-1131/ Date accessed: 28/01/2019) 81 that made its debut appearance off-Broadway at the N.E.T.W.O.R.K. Theatre. In 1983 Lee’s comedy, with a re-worked script and a mostly new cast, was again produced before being adapted into an audio drama, released to positive acclaim in 2010. Club Parnassus, an online blog that reviews science fiction films, literature, and comic books predominantly, was impressed by the audio production and asked: “If there’s a stage play out there featuring the wild and ribald adventures of four female space rangers, why is this not performed as often as The Sound of Music? This is just what you need to get people going to the theatre again.” (For Your Ears Only: Starstruck, 2010) Audiences and authors had now had a few decades of consistent science fiction texts through which to familiarise themselves with the conventions of the genre. Science fiction pastiches and comedies like The Rocky Horror Show and Starstruck started to appear more often, subverting the audience’s newly acquired expectations:

Two films from this period did manage what very few SF films have managed; a workable blend of genre and comedy. Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973) demonstrated, among other things, that the conventions of SF cinema were now so familiar that it was possible to score comic points off them with ease. John Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974) is a more rounded piece of film- making, a satirical swipe at human, and more specifically American, insularity in the face of cosmic splendours.

(Roberts, 2006, p. 278)

Star Wars and Star Trek (1966) were so popular to a mass audience by the 1980’s that other science fiction properties were making references to them within their own text. In the time-travel adventure film Back to the Future (1985), Marty McFly pretends to be an alien after travelling back to 1955 and introduces himself as “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan”, blending character and location elements from both franchises. Star Wars has been the subject of several parody/spoof films and television shows, such as Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987). The events of the season six episode ‘Blue Harvest’ from the animated comedy series Family Guy (1999) depend on the audience’s knowledge of the original Star Wars movie it frequently references for the humour to work. The increasing popularity and cult status of films such as Star Wars, musical stage shows such as The Rocky Horror Show and literature like Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series showcased a potential next step for science fiction: a move away from the ‘Hard Sci-Fi’ that could be difficult for new readers to engage with, to the 82 point of inaccessibility. Embracing the fantastical adventures or the sillier, wackier opportunities a genre like science fiction could generate opened the door for more people to access the genre and in doing so, increase the ever-widening acceptance of the genre in general society.

Elsewhere science fiction in the cinema was benefitting from improving visual effects and story-telling techniques, allowing filmmakers to embrace the more fantastical side of the genre. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – co-written by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and film director Stanley Kubrick – pushed the limits of existing film technology to tell a mysterious tale across millions of years about evolution, space exploration, and artificial intelligence. The remarkable visual effects inspired a new generation of filmmakers, including the director of one of the most financially successful science fiction/fantasy film series of the twentieth century, George Lucas:

Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, it (Star Wars) can be compared, but personally I think that '2001' is far superior.

(‘The Force Behind George’, Rolling Stone Magazine, 1977)

Lucas found international fame and acclaim with his trilogy of Star Wars films (1977 – 1983) which took the ‘hero’s journey’ framework from the fantasy genre and set it in a distant galaxy with spacecraft, aliens, and lightsabres. The late 1970’s also saw Lucas’s contemporaries Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott release science fiction films that are considered classics of the genre: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Alien (1979). Scott and Spielberg continued to direct science fiction films in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and with great critical and commercial success: Spielberg directed E.T. The Extra- Terrestrial (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993), while Scott directed the critically acclaimed and highly revered Blade Runner (1982).

By the 1990’s, science fiction movies have become event cinema. Every year, different science fiction films competed to be crowned that year’s blockbuster movie. On television, science fiction programming was not as critically well received. Still, programs such as Doctor Who (1963) and Star Trek continued to have healthy, loyal fanbases, even when those shows were no longer produced or broadcast. The emerging

83 video game market had embraced science fiction themes from its earliest days, with arcade classics such as Space Invaders (1978) and Asteroids (1979) leading the way for the science fiction genre in interactive entertainment. Despite the increasing interest in the genre, and the financial dividends science fiction cinema was reaping, the theatre continued to generate no science fiction texts that could match this level of critical and commercial achievement.

One of the genre’s more prolific playwrights of this period was Alan Ayckbourn, who wrote and staged several science fiction productions including Henceforward…, Communicating Doors (1994), and Comic Potential (1998). Ayckbourn’s work is of interest to this project, because he alternated his use of science fiction between scripts that included science fiction elements, flavouring a story that is not overtly influenced by science fiction conventions itself, to stories with science fiction as the foundation or central premise. In Henceforward… the science fiction elements of the dystopic, heavily automated setting drive the story. The story centres on a father who, desperate to regain custody of his daughter, attempts to prove to his ex-wife and social services that he is a functioning member of society by passing off an android nanny as his new fiancé. Ayckbourn switches his approach to use science fiction elements as a farcical plot device in Communicating Doors, in which a hotel suite travels between the years 1974, 1994, and 2014 to facilitate the protagonist attempting to prevent two murders. Comic Potential sees Ayckbourn return to using science fiction to provide the narrative with its novum, in which an android actor in a daytime television soap opera falls in love with a human script writer. Ayckbourn’s work is reminiscent of the ‘Hard Sci-Fi’ ideals that Campbell encouraged. However, while Ayckbourn applies a more light-hearted approach to the consequences of the narrative’s novum; the robots of Henceforward… and Comic Potential are not directly the antagonist or cause of grievance for the human characters. The stakes are generally only raised for an individual character and their social wellbeing instead of the fate of a society or all of humanity.

In Science Fiction and the theatre, Willingham made it known that he believed the fault for the absence of good science fiction on stage was not due to failings of the genre. He asserted that the blame should lie at the feet of those who work in creating content for the theatre:

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The theatre could learn much from science fiction. The genre offers freedom from the conventional. It is fertile ground from which the modern playwright, instead of tilling the same, tired soil, could harvest new ideas. But although hundreds of plays based on science-fictional premises have been written, few of these scripts have any direct connection with the science- fictional avant-garde. Nor have they true merit. Most seek not to challenge the audience, but to entertain it, and few achieve even that goal. Most science-fiction scripts are the products of the old playwriting formulas, with science-fictional premises thrown in for novelty.

(Willingham, 1994, p. 5-6)

Many of the science fiction productions of the late twentieth century generally fall into Willingham’s definition of ‘entertaining, not challenging.’ Ayckbourn was one of the few whose work mostly attempted to tell new stories with science fiction driving the plot. Henceforward… and Comic Potential both explored what it means to be human and alive through the comparison of artificial, robotic life in much the same way that R.U.R. first did on stage in the 1920’s. However, Ayckbourn was not above attempting to use science fiction for the sake of entertaining novelty as he did in Communicating Doors with its time-travelling hotel suite. Sadly for Willingham, and science fiction on stage as a whole, the practice of using science fiction premises to spice up a sub-standard story would continue into the twenty-first century.

Early Twenty-First Century – All the Worlds on Stage

Against the backdrop of science fiction permeating popular culture through cinema, the genre broke new ground in other screen-based entertainment mediums in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The ‘Nerd/Geek Culture’, once an unappealing demographic for youths in Western societies is now more celebrated than it ever has been, partly due to the phenomenal commercial success of science fiction texts as film franchises, television series and video game releases. Interestingly, more recent science fiction television offerings including Westworld (2016) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017) – based on books by Michael Crichton and Margaret Atwood respectively – are evoking the ‘Hard Sci-Fi’ style of the literature released in the latter half of the genre’s ‘Golden Age’. A flurry of award-winning stage productions has not materialised to parallel the 85 critical or commercial success of science fiction elsewhere. However, the wide-reaching spread of texts in other mediums has the potential to influence the generation of actors, playwrights, directors, and technicians who are working in theatres today. The prominence of science fiction in literature and film does not a guarantee that we will see a ‘Golden Age’ for science fiction on the stage in the next few decades. Still, it is becoming apparent that science fiction stage plays are at least increasing in number and becoming more common place.

In contrast to Peake’s Presumption, or, The Fate of Frankenstein and other nineteenth century productions, contemporary stage versions of Frankenstein have moved away from the monstrous, Karloffian Creature with bolts in the neck. Newer productions embrace Shelley’s imagining of a new man, born without identity and purpose, whose monstrous side results from Victor and humanity’s rejection, thereby comparing the Creature to his creator and examining what it means to be human. Danny Boyle’s 2011 production of Frankenstein showcases this relationship by having its two lead actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller) switch between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature in alternate performances. In an interview with The Guardian a month before the production debuted, Boyle and Miller spoke about what story they were trying to tell with this adaptation and the purpose of having two actors play both creature and creator:

"Frankenstein is creating life without women," Boyle reasons. "The idea is to bring two actors as close to that notion as possible. And how do you do that? In terms of the performance, Frankenstein and the Creature literally create each other: every other night they reinhabit each other."

(Costa, 2011, date accessed 27/01/2019)

I saw both versions of Boyle’s Frankenstein in 2014 when they were broadcast to cinemas in Perth as part of the National Theatre’s National Theatre Live program. It is interesting to note what this production chooses to omit from the source text; particularly the character of Captain Walton, whose conversations with Victor Frankenstein after rescuing him in the Arctic are used as a framing device in the original novel. Boyle’s production begins with the ‘birth’ of the Creature, emerging from a mysterious artificial ‘womb’ and spending the first few minutes on stage learning how to crawl, walk, and run like an infant before a horrified Victor discovers and rejects him. 86

Gone are the nineteenth and twentieth century additions of lab assistants and neck bolts, but also missing (in large part) are Victor’s early days and his first experiments with reanimation. These choices were made so that the production could focus on that central relationship between Victor and the Creature. This re-contextualisation could potentially make those viewers who have read the original text re-consider the nature of this crucial relationship:

It's Boyle's intention to make us rethink a character "distorted" by cinema, and "give him back his voice". As Miller says: "People think this is a horror story about a monster, but it's not: it's about abandonment, companionship, prejudice, and original sin – are you a product of your environment, is evil within you?"

(Costa, 2011, date accessed 27/01/2019)

By bringing these two characters to the centre of the performance and having Cumberbatch and Miller portray them alternately, Boyle has framed them as two sides of the same coin. The actors changing roles forces viewers to re-evaluate both beings and how we think about them, stripping away decades of horror, neck bolts, and screams of “It’s alive!” This production attempts to show that the real monster is not ‘the other’, but our fear of otherness. This realisation influenced my production @lantis and the portrayal of the non-human character of Lug, which I discuss in detail in the next chapter of this exegesis, My Theatre Praxis.

Another stage production of Frankenstein which attempted to be more faithful to the source text was a 2016 Perth-based production in which I was a cast member,30 adapted directly from the book to the stage by Perth-based playwright and Murdoch University alumni Scott McArdle. McArdle retained Captain Walton (although changed into a female Captain played by a female actor) as the framing narrative of the near- death Victor re-telling his pitiful life story to Walton. The production was well received, with one reviewer from the Independent Theatre Association praising the script:

McArdle has wisely taken us back to the original script and theme, by allowing us to see behind the broken body of the hapless ‘creature’. This ‘vision’ took us on an emotional rollercoaster ride, first we feel sorry for the creature and wish it

30 I played Victor Frankenstein’s repulsive, overbearing landlord during his student days in Vienna, who is a minor antagonist in the first act. 87

success; before we hit the skids and witness it crashing into another killing spree. The writing skills exhibited in this adaptation are exceptional; just a little subtle humour, a genuine feeling of hopelessness for the creature, rapidly followed by anger at attitudes of the public to this poor human.

(Independent Theatre Association, 2016, date accessed 27/01/2019)

McArdle added his take on the Frankenstein mythos by inserting a new element to his script: Victor started having visions of the ghost of his mother (Caroline) when he began his foray into the medicinal world. Caroline Frankenstein appeared in multiple scenes after her on-stage death in the first act, urging Victor to pursue his reanimation experiments despite the concerns of other living characters. Supposedly only Victor can see or hear Caroline, but whether she is a spirit, or a figment of Victor’s imagination is not explained. McArdle’s decision to add a mystical, spiritual element to the Frankenstein narrative might, for some, take his script out of the realms of science fiction story-telling and into magical realism, or at least dilutes the audience’s capacity to apply a science fiction reading to the show. If magic or mysticism becomes a part of a text’s reality, it can become difficult to ascertain which elements belong to science fiction and which to the Fantasy genre. Being able to distinguish the features of each genre is essential, as though sharing similar elements, science fiction and fantasy have different rules for the cause of the unnatural phenomenon (or Novum) that they depict. This adherence to the rules is usually not an important part of the construction of Fantasy narratives but is a key part of many science fiction texts.

There has been a rise in science fiction productions in local theatre in Perth, Western Australia over the last ten years. Examples of productions include Coincidences at the End of Time (2013), Between Solar Systems (2015), Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens (2015), Multiverse Theory in D (2015), Laika (2017), Know Your Enemy (2017), The Perilous Adventures of the Postman (2017), Stasis, and Captain Spaceship. From my experience as a student at Murdoch University, the increase of science fiction texts on stage over the last decade has been notable. Between 2007 and 2014, there was only one science fiction play put on by the various student theatre societies: Trees in Space (2009). Since then, there has been a rise in the number of science fiction productions produced by student theatre companies similar to that seen in the local theatre

88 community. There have been adaptations of classic science fiction texts from other mediums, including The War of the Worlds (2015) – which sought to recreate the infamous 1938 radio production starring Orson Welles, the dystopian musical 2084 – a transformative musical adaptation of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and McArdle’s production of Frankenstein (2016). There have also been several original works written and performed by students of Murdoch University during this time, including my Honours production Thaw, the production that forms the creative component of this exegesis @lantis, as well as Cosmic Bottle, and A Mind Transcendent (2018). Internationally, adaptations of existing science fiction texts continue to be the most prominent forms of science fiction theatre. Aside from the previously mentioned 2011 Frankenstein production directed by Danny Boyle, other recent notable adaptations include Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was adapted to the stage in 2013 by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan. After being staged in the West End and on Broadway, it was toured around Australia in 2017. One of David Bowie’s final works before his death in 2016 was Lazarus (2015), a musical featuring a number of Bowie’s most well-known songs. Lazarus began as an off-Broadway production and at the time of writing has been staged in the West End and Germany, with a further production staged in Melbourne, Australia in May 2019.

Whilst adaptations of existing science fiction texts continue to enjoy a high level of prominence in science fiction theatre on an international level, there has been a small but notable increase in the number of original works that have found critical acclaim and won awards during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Mr. Burns, a Post- Electric Play (2012) is one of the most notable productions for the way in which it walks the line between originality and adaptation. Anne Washburn’s post-apocalyptic dark comedy follows the adaptation of a story taken from a single episode of the American animated television series The Simpsons. Each of the three acts of the play shows how ‘Cape Feare’ – an episode from the fifth season of The Simpsons – is changed and adapted by different groups of survivors of a global catastrophe over a period of eight decades. Act One is set in the immediate aftermath of the unspecified catastrophe with survivors reminiscing over the television episode as they remembered it, quoting lines to one another and bonding over a shared knowledge of The Simpsons. Act Two follows the same survivors seven years later, now in a theatrical troupe that re-enacts the

89 televisual experience of watching The Simpsons for a post-television audience of fellow survivors. This production staged by the survivors also includes re-enactments of commercials they remember from television. Act Three jumps forward seventy-five years where the ‘Cape Feare’ narrative has changed to become a mythic musical tale that reflects the harsh post-electric world the characters of the play now inhabit. Washburn uses the genre of science fiction theatre to tell a narrative that is firmly rooted in live performance and its importance in a world where technologically dependant entertainment mediums are gone. Part of the impact of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play is that it is performed as a play and not as another ‘electric’ medium such as television, film, or radio. The act of putting on a play informs the narrative of Mr. Burns as much as the episode of television being adapted. Act Two offers the clearest demonstration of this, with the survivors arguing over the nature of their adaptations. They only have a few select episodes of The Simpsons they can adapt due to a rival post-apocalyptic theatre troupe owning the rights to perform other legendary episodes of the now-lost series. Mr. Burns uses this conflict within the narrative to comment on and address issues around itself as an adaptation from the medium of television into a live performance work.

The majority of original science fiction plays of note produced in the twenty-first century (so far) have been written and staged in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, often debuting in one nation before being adapted by theatrical practitioners in the other. American works such as Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play and The Nether (2013) and British plays including A Number (2002) and the controversial and confrontational Mercury Fur (2005) have made trans-Atlantic voyages after initial critical success in their country of origin. Indeed, the British science fiction play X (2016) by Alistair McDowall makes commentary on the diminishing importance of British people in international politics by contrasting them directly with Americans: “This is where they send the new, the underqualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It’s like they’re building the master race out there.” (McDowall, p.30) This commentary from McDowall is interesting to reflect on with the USA and the UK being two of the leading nations in the western theatrical world. McDowall is likely aware that his British audience are well-versed in the perceived cultural and perceptual differences between the UK and the USA, given that entertainment media produced in

90 the two nations that comment on each other often highlight this, usually for comedic effect. It makes sense for McDowall, a British playwright, to utilise this commonly understood national difference for a theatrical work as the most likely place for X to be staged after the UK is the USA. This use of shared narrative language and cultural understanding between American and British theatrical practitioners is one that translates to the genre of science fiction too.

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, The Nether, A Number and Mercury Fur each uses science fiction to explore questions around our social identities in their own unique ways. Mr. Burns does this through exploring the importance that storytelling and mythology play in human culture, with characters who have survived an apocalypse forming new identities as performers of the culturally significant Simpsons tales. In The Nether, a future is presented where the internet has developed into a gigantic virtual reality network called ‘The Nether’ that allows individuals to form new identities and live out fantasies they cannot in the non-digital world. A consequence of this is that illicit, immoral, and indictable fantasies are being lived out in the Nether. A ‘realm’ within the Nether called ‘The Hideaway’ is formed as a place where paedophiles can engage with their desires inside a simulation; resulting in two men, the creator of ‘The Hideaway’ and a long-time user of the service, being interrogated by a real-world detective. The Nether examines theoretical questions that have long been asked about the virtual world and our identities within it whilst drawing parallels to existing and ongoing issues around the legality of human behaviour in online spaces.

Mercury Fur by British playwright Philip Ridley is an older text that explores science fiction themes and elements that Mr. Burns and The Nether take up. Set in an anarchic, post-apocalyptic, post-electric London31, the events of Mercury Fur occur during a party where a gang of youths attempt to survive whilst enduring cruelty, violence, and substance abuse that specifically affects memory. Mercury Fur moves away from the usual tropes of the standard science fiction post-apocalypse setting of irradiated monsters hunting down survivors or the inter-human battle for resources and shelter. Instead of asking the characters to address or solve the problems that will fix the world (or at least their own small section of it), the play puts its characters in a very dark place

31 Or New York in the American adaptation staged Off Broadway in 2015. 91

– emotionally and physically – and shows the audience how the inhabitants of such a dreadful world are shaped into dreadful people so that they may survive.

Finally, A Number by Caryl Churchill uses the practice of human cloning, as yet belonging to the realm of science fiction, to tackle questions around identity. Famed for her use of absurdism, implausible settings, erratic use of time, and non-naturalistic theatrical conventions, Churchill wrote A Number without a specific setting, save that all scenes take place in the home of the character named Salter. There are no stage directions either, just the dialogue. The four characters are only given ages as descriptors, and there is an instruction that A Number is to be performed by two actors; one actor plays Salter, the other actor plays the remaining characters. A Number has remained on stages in the UK and the USA fairly consistently, with revival performances held every few years since its 2002 debut. This is in part due to Churchill’s own popularity as a playwright, and also because the themes explored including Nature vs. Nurture, redemption, and parental abuse remain as impactful and universal today as they were in 2002. The framing device of successful human cloning is used to frame two ‘What if?’ questions that drive the narrative: ‘If we could successfully clone human beings, what would the world look like?’ and ‘What are the consequences if we did it?’ Churchill chooses to present an outcome where fixing the mistakes of the past with the scientific novum of cloning does not create a future with the desired corrections.

In December 2019, I travelled to London to attend the TALOS 2019 Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London, where I watched seven different productions over five nights. The range of subject matter explored, sub-sections of the science fiction genre presented, and performance styles were highly diverse:

• We Sing, I Sang (2019) – a choose-your-own-adventure style science fiction musical featuring live music and interpretive dance. • One Woman Alien (2019) – a science fiction pastiche of the 1979 film Alien, performed by a single female actor featuring social commentary with a focus on the role of women in science fiction and the wider impact that Alien had on popular culture. • Quintessence (2019) – a science fiction post-apocalyptic utopian play featuring a single performer playing an artificial intelligence attempting to recreate Humanity with only the works of William Shakespeare to guide her. 92

• Room Service (2019) – a science fiction comedy/drama about predictive machine learning, privacy, and the hospitality industry. A businessman stays at a hotel for a conference, where he meets and becomes familiar with his room’s personalised artificial intelligence. • RawTransport™ (2019) – a fifteen-minute show where, through the utilisation of virtual reality headsets and engaging the senses of smell and touch, the audience is taken on a virtual holiday. However, not everything is as idyllic as it first appears. • Mission Creep (2019) – a science fiction comedy that borders on farce with a focus on sexuality politics and Armageddon. • I Will Tell You In A Minute (2019) – an Afrofuturist time-travel story where a celebrity from the year 2039 travels back in time to 2019 to meet her younger self in a text that explores the idea of Utopia and examines racism and sexism in twenty-first century Britain from a first-hand perspective.

These seven productions were all performed in the same venue (the Upstairs Studio space at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham, London). This black box theatre seats around sixty to seventy audience members and has a simplistic lighting and sound set up. The stage space is approximately ten metres across and six metres deep, with black curtains surrounding the performance space. Given these restrictions, the majority of shows had either a few select set pieces (Mission Creep only used two wooden chairs and a box filled with pillows and blankets) or no set (We Sing, I Sang, Quintessence, I Will Tell You In A Minute). All seven shows were able to tell science fiction stories in that space effectively.

The standout show at the TALOS Festival for me was Mission Creep. This one-act, hour long play was comedic in its presentation of an impending apocalypse but contained a surprisingly heartfelt exploration of non-heteronormative sexual identities within a society and scenario where they are not valued, wanted, or appreciated. Mission Creep was very well written, excellently performed by the cast of three actors, and extremely funny. The science fiction novum of the text was the discovery of an advanced alien species who wished to take two humans back to their home world as part of an intergalactic relocation program. The alien race would look after the two successful applicants and observe them to understand the Human life cycle better. As

93 such, the two applicants would need to be a young and fertile male and female partnership. With Earth on the brink of nuclear war, queer-platonic friends Tess and Liam attempt to pass themselves off as a straight heterosexual couple. Mission Creep follows their final interview with Mary, who is interrogating them on behalf of the British Government to ensure that they are the perfect couple for the job. Mission Creep is not a production that looks traditionally ‘sci-fi’. Tess, Liam, and Mary all wear contemporary 2010’s attire, the most advanced technology used by any of the characters are their mobile phones and Mary’s iPad, and the production is set entirely inside an office in an undisclosed part of Britain. We hear about the aliens, the nuclear weapons, and the collapse of social order that is occurring out in the world from the characters, but we do not ever see it. Mission Creep is not about those things; it is about two people trying to save themselves and seeing just how far they will betray who they are to survive.

Mission Creep stood out for me for its portrayal of Queer characters in a narrative that was directly impacted by this facet of their identity. The author, Bee Scott, has written a text that puts a sensitive issue in the centre of a comedic science fiction narrative but does not belittle or diminish it, none of the jokes in the script ‘punch down’. Liam’s bisexuality and Tess’s asexuality are never the butts of the joke. However, Mission Creep does not shy away from the realities of being Queer in contemporary Western societies like Britain. The interviewer Mary, who the audience is encouraged to assume is heterosexual by her lack of empathy and understanding towards non- heteronormative sexual identities, makes light-hearted but still discriminatory statements about bisexual people. She is unaware of Liam’s bisexuality; he is trying to hide it from her so he and Tess can pass for a straight couple. The humour and drama in the early scenes of the play are derived mainly from Liam becoming frustrated by Mary’s bigotry but being unable to articulate what he wants to say, as it will end his ruse. This production’s depiction of people who are Queer is one I have not seen staged so effectively in any other stage production of science fiction, or indeed in the wider medium of theatre in general. Representation of different social groups within entertainment media is essential, particularly to younger audiences. A play such as Mission Creep, if appropriately marketed and staged well, could attract younger audience members to the theatres, for its representation of Queer people, its clever writing, and the science fiction premise that informs the world of its narrative.

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Another notable production from the 2019 TALOS Festival was One Woman Alien, perhaps more a show about science fiction than a science fiction show. The stage is set with a wooden table, covered in a variety of household objects, costume pieces such as hats, fake beards and wigs, action figures, and a large full milk bottle. On steps comedian Katy Schutte dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with patches identifying her as a crew member of the fictional spaceship Nostromo from the 1979 film Alien. What follows is an hour-long recreation of that film, with Schutte playing all of the parts through a mixture of costume pieces, accent switching, posture adjustments, and – in the case of the Xenomorph – puppetry. Frequently, Schutte addresses the audience directly, telling them what scene she is about to re-enact, how cool it looked in the original film, and how not cool it is about to look when she re-enacts said scenes with household items. Memorably, to recreate the scene in which Bishop is decapitated and revealed to be an android who bleeds a white liquid, Schutte kneels to leave only her head exposed above the table, takes a mouthful of milk from the bottle on the table, and starts acting out the scene with milk spilling out of her mouth and all over herself and the table.

One Woman Alien is humorous, informative, and an interesting examination of Alien’s impact on science fiction cinema, and the place of women in science fiction narratives. It is a response to science fiction in another medium, rather than original science fiction theatre. While it is a joy to see Schutte performing live, and the show does involve a few moments of audience interaction to depict the infamous chest- bursting scene, the show does not necessarily utilise the medium of theatre to tell its story. In truth, it feels more like an elaborate stand-up comedy routine than it does a theatrical experience. One Woman Alien is an unusual work in a live performance space: equal parts parody, adaptation, and examination of an original science fiction screen text. While it might not necessarily be ‘theatre’, it is a show that drew in a different type of audience; fans of the Alien films, fans of stand-up comedy, and people who were attracted to the premise of a single performer acting out a film. The audience of One Woman Alien might not have intended to watch a show in a theatrical space that examines common tropes of the science fiction genre, but that is what they saw. As established in the survey results in Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data, a large proportion of the @lantis audience regularly consumed their science fiction through

95 film. Engaging with other entertainment mediums and their key texts could be a useful way for the theatre to attract new audience members.

Each of the shows I saw at the 2019 TALOS Festival offered unique experiences to its prospective audiences. We Sing, I Sang allowed its audience to choose what course the narrative of the text took by presenting three story branches on a projected screen and asking people to raise their hands in three different ways to indicate their preference. RawTransport™ took three audience members on a virtual holiday with the use of VR headsets and interwove a narrative about the mind of the program’s creator, possibly trapped in the code. Quintessence asked one of the science fiction genre’s most ubiquitous questions (What does it mean to be human?) and recontextualised the works of Shakespeare to throw new light on both Shakespeare’s canon and the human condition. The shows achieved this with small production budgets and very few of the commodities common in most other theatre. The attraction for the audience was the science fiction narratives or framing devices the productions utilised. Except for We Sing, I Sang,32 all of the productions were well attended, drawing in a wide variety of ages and a relatively even gender balance. The audiences saw original pieces that reflected contemporary social issues, works that incorporated other more well-known texts from cinema and literature to tell new stories, musicals, comedies, and in the case of RawTransport™ the integration of technology in the theatrical space. Science fiction is a genre that inspires innovation and inventiveness from its practitioners and can bring new ideas and audiences into live performance spaces.

Some original science fiction plays produced in the last decade have been well- received and won some small-scale awards;33 however, there has been no significant impact generated by these works on the wider science fiction genre beyond the stage, or on the practice of theatre itself. Indeed, the disdain with which some within the theatre community hold science fiction is still evident, such as in this quote from Alexis Soloski – a reviewer for The New York Times – written about the trilogy of science fiction plays by Mac Rogers, The Honeycomb Trilogy (2012 – 2016):

32 Myself and my partner were two of the three audience members who attended We Sing, I Sang, which was disappointing given its central mechanic involved the audience collectively deciding which narrative paths to follow. 33 Like Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (2013), which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. 96

A lot of comic books, midnight movies, Joss Whedon shows and “Doctor Who” episodes have inspired the unapologetic science fiction of “The Honeycomb Trilogy.” Which is not to say that (the playwright) Mr. Rogers’s fanboy voice is simplistic or especially derivative. His vision of human relationships (and maybe nonhuman ones) is nuanced, and there’s a probing moral consciousness underlying the geeky whiz-bang.

(“Review: In ‘The Honeycomb Trilogy,’ a Family Confronts Invading Apian Overlords”, The New York Times, 2015)

The notion that the science fiction texts which influenced Mac Rogers are “simplistic or especially derivative” is symptomatic of a pervasive view that has dogged science fiction in the theatre (and other mediums) for the last century or two. While disheartening, it is not a notion with which I entirely disagree. The quality of productions I have observed during my research has had a broad scope. Local productions such as A Mind Transcendent and Know Your Enemy were disappointing. Both texts had interesting science fiction premises but quickly descended into amateurish, unenjoyable performances with poor writing exacerbated by low production standards. High-end quality productions, including Laika, demonstrate that with a good script, well-working live theatrical and technical elements, and a fully engaged cast, science fiction theatre – just like the genre’s best books and films – can deliver the ‘wow factor’ that amazes audiences. To conclude this chapter, I explore three theatrical practices that have proven to be areas of growth and development for the science fiction theatrical practitioner, starting with Radio Plays.

Theatre and Radio Plays

While not exclusively the dominion of science fiction productions, radio plays within the theatre have proven a popular format for science fiction writers and directors. The most significant text for the science fiction radio play is Howard Koch’s adaptation of The War of the Worlds (1938) for radio. First performed and broadcast on October the 30th 1938, Koch’s WOTW gained notoriety through the mass hysteria its broadcast caused. Some listeners to the live broadcast heard the fictional news reports regarding Martians crash landing in New Jersey and attacking humans and believed them to be genuine. These people, unaware they were listening to a radio play, panicked and, in

97 some cases, fled their homes. This was an understandable reaction; the radio was still relatively new in American society and the ‘code of conduct’ between broadcaster and listener had yet to be formalised. Only a year previously, the first live broadcast of a sensational ‘breaking news’ story – The Hindenburg airship crash34 – had occurred. People expected real events to sound one way, and fiction another. Presenting fiction in the format of breaking news bulletins was innovative and compelling storytelling, but consequently caused chaos for an unsuspecting audience:

Women wept in front of their radios; so did their husbands. Everywhere, people ran into the streets, unsure where to go or what to do. Many took to their cars, speeding around like mad and covering their faces with wet towels to protect themselves from the gas. In Newark, traffic cops watched dumbfounded as dozens of automobiles careened through intersections, heedless of stoplights, pedestrians, or other motorists. Panicked listeners tied up phone lines, calling their loved ones to warn them or just to say good-bye, and jamming the switchboards of radio stations, newspapers, and police headquarters. Those who didn’t get through reasoned that it was the Martians who were responsible. Of the more than six million estimated listeners, 1.7 million were believed to take the radio play as fact, and 1.2 million panicked.

(Holmsten & Lubertozzi, 2001, p.6)

This incident caused Orson Welles – then a twenty-three-year-old up-and-coming actor/director – a great degree of trouble. Police raided the studio shortly after the completion of the broadcast, and the press interrogation of Welles and his co-producer John Housemann was intense, sensationalised, and unpleasant.35 It also made Welles a household name as a great contemporary storyteller, whose rendition and delivery of H.G. Wells’ (at the time) forty-year-old book had literally spooked people into the

34 It is a noteworthy coincidence that the site of the Hindenburg crash (The Lakehurst Maxfield Field airbase in New Jersey) is just thirty miles south-east of Grover’s Mill, the location of the fictitious Martian landing and attack depicted in Koch’s War of the Worlds production. This, perhaps, added to the believability of the faux news reports. 35 Housemann and Welles were initially led to believe that their broadcast had led to the deaths of dozens of people via accident, riot, and suicide: “The print reporters, resentful of the business radio had taken away from their papers, were out for blood. How many deaths have you heard of? They asked, implying, as Houseman told it, “that they knew of thousands.” Had they heard of the fatal stampede in the New Jersey hall? Did they know about all of the traffic deaths and suicides? The way the reporters put their questions, Houseman assumed that the ditches were choked with corpses.” (Holmsten & Lubertozzi, 2001, p.15) 98 streets. This event, and its subsequent infamy, could effectively be argued to have launched his career.

Although not strictly a play, radio or otherwise, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is another audio-based production of WOTW that has been tremendously successful, particularly on a commercial level. Beginning as a progressive rock concept album released in 1978, Jeff Wayne’s WOTW proved an influential and imaginative re-telling of Wells’ novel. Indeed, aspects of Wayne’s adaptation are more well known today than the original. Someone familiar with War of the Worlds is more likely to quote the ‘million to one’ line from Wayne’s lyric (“The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said”) than Wells’ (“The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one.”) In 2006, Jeff Wayne adapted the album into a touring arena show: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds – Live on Stage (2006).36 During the performance, Wayne conducted a full orchestra, as a myriad of live singers, pyrotechnics, hologrammatic technology, and a thirty-foot tall animatronic Martian Tripod puppet were all utilised to bring Wells’ vision of interplanetary invasion to life on the stage. This use of technology is a critical factor in another War of the Worlds production discussed later in this chapter; Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience (2019). Wayne’s impact on The War of the Worlds and science fiction at large (particularly within live performance) has been profound, perhaps even more significant than that of Orson Welles. His use of emergent technologies for the art of stagecraft paved the way for future adaptations of science fiction works. Perhaps we could take the Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) that Jules Verne envisaged ourselves,37 or help Victor Frankenstein re-build the Creature in his laboratory.

Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds remains one of the most well-known radio plays in the world due to its unintended impact as a cause of reportedly immense panic and temporary social upheaval. Whilst this specific performance is significant to discussions

36 Later adapted and remounted as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds – The New Generation (2012). 37 There is in fact a concept album adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth that was released four years prior to Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, produced by the progressive rock musician Rick Wakeman. Although it received mixed reviews and has not gone on to have the same impact as Wayne’s WOTW album, it enjoyed a revival in popularity in 2012 when Wakeman re-recorded the album. Wakeman performed the new version live on stage to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the original album’s release in July 2019. 99 of science fiction, it is also crucial to emphasise that it was not a theatrical work, and was not designed to be performed as a stage play. This is an important distinction in this exegesis; not all radio plays are works of theatre and live performance, but some are. I performed in one such radio play for the stage, a theatrical adaptation of Koch’s WOTW script in 2015 with the Murdoch Theatre Company. This version of WOTW attempted to re-create the high tension and fear of Koch’s work on a stage that was dressed as the 1938 ‘Mercury Theatre On the Air’ studio where the production was broadcast. All the cast wore period-appropriate clothing, and the foley artists created sound effects using similar methods to those in the original 1938 production. Even though the script was unchanged from the broadcast radio play of 1938, the work was transplanted into the theatre and performed as a play. The actors rehearsed the work in much the same way they would for a staged non-radio play, the biggest difference was that instead of trying to create the reality of the text and its depiction of a Martian invasion, the 2015 production recreated the studio of the 1938 production as a work of live performance. The live audience who attended the 2015 theatrical production provided an element to that performance that was missing from the 1938 audio drama: live reactions. The 2015 cast heard the gasps of the attendant audience when the Martian pod opened for the first time, saw the delight or disgust in individual faces upon hearing the description of a Martian tentacle slithering from the pod, and felt the collective mood transform from fascination to fear as the Martian attack began with the use of the disintegration ray. It provided a communication through performance between performer and audience missing from the 1938 production, transforming Koch’s script from an inflexible audio drama with a nonreciprocal audience relationship into an adaptive and responsive staged radio play, a work of theatre.

I encountered another WOTW production entirely by chance that same year when I was walking through the Perth Cultural Centre.38 It was Halloween night, and the industrial electronic band ‘MotET’ and a group of local actors performed MotET’s The War of the Worlds (2015). Their version of WOTW mixed the first half of Koch’s adaptation with live renditions of music from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War

38 The Perth Cultural Centre is an arts hub space open to the general public located in Northbridge, an area within the City of Perth that houses a number of performance venues (including theatres and an amphitheatre), public artworks, restaurants, and bars, as well as the State Library of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and the Western Australian Museum. 100 of the Worlds (1978). This free public performance was very effective,39 and the use of the large LED display screen in the cultural centre to show animations of Martian tripods destroying city landscapes was a highlight. These examples showcase that actors can perform a well-written science fiction source text such as The War of the Worlds in any number of live formats with great effect; be it in a radio studio, on a stage, or even in the streets. The creativity of the practitioner(s) is perhaps the only limit to science fiction in live performance. Neither Murdoch Theatre Company nor MotET’s productions of WOTW were staged with the intention of being recorded and consumed by a later audience. They were to be experienced live by either a traditional theatre attending audience, or, in the case of MotET’s version, a transient passing member of society transformed into a spectator by the unexpected spectacle of public performance. These were productions designed around the premise and practices of theatre and not pre- recorded radio, despite the text they were adapting being built for the medium of the wireless.

Away from The War of the Worlds, theatrical practitioners have used the radio play format to stage innovative original science-based texts. In 2017, Perth-based production company Second Chance Theatre staged an original work Laika: A Staged Radio Play at the Blue Room Theatre. Laika is not entirely fictional, based as it is on actual events that occurred in the Russian space program between the late 1950’s and late 1960’s and with people from the period, including cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, depicted on stage. However, the show is not just a re-staging of real events as we know them to have occurred.40 Writer and director Scott McArdle (whose 2016 Frankenstein production is discussed earlier in this chapter) crafts a story where the science of the real world infuses an original story about people struggling to choose between moral integrity and the glory of scientific success in a competitive and cut-throat environment. The use of live foley (designed and performed by @lantis Lead Foley designer Andrew David) produced the effect of rockets blasting off without the difficulties of attempting to construct a believable visual image for the audience. Whether they have seen actual shuttle launches (in person or via recorded footage) or seen facsimiles in Hollywood

39 I ended up being late for whatever event I was passing through Perth to get to as I decided to stay and watch the remainder of the show, such was the quality of the production and performances. 40 Given that much of the information around the Russian space program at this time was hidden from the public or deliberately reported inaccurately, an objective truth on what events did or did not occur is likely unobtainable. 101 space dramas; audiences have an idea of how a rocket taking off ‘should’ look. Attempting to compete with these experiences visually in a small black-box theatre on a significantly smaller budget than a Hollywood film studio or – in the case of the actual event – NASA, is foolish; particularly in Laika in which the rockets are not the focal point. The audience is engaged in the internal struggle of protagonist Natalia Volkov, as the unethical practices of her colleagues test her resolve to push the boundaries of known science. The scientific story aspects of rocket engineering and space exploration are not central to the narrative, but they inform the setting. Unconvincing special effects can undermine the validity of the production and the script content for the audience.

Radio plays written for the radio have proven a productive launchpad for original science fiction properties to launch themselves into other mediums, particularly science fiction comedies. Both The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf have their origins in radio. Red Dwarf began life as a recurring sketch called ‘Dave Hollins: Space Cadet’ on the second season of BBC radio sketch show Son of Cliché (1984), before being developed and commissioned for BBC television two years later. Since then, Red Dwarf has broadcast twelve seasons41 over thirty years, with a movie-length special that aired on British television in April 2020. The series has also produced spin-off content in other entertainment mediums, including two novels (Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (1989) and Better Than Life (1991)) and an official role-playing game (Red Dwarf – The Roleplaying Game (2003)). Hitchhiker’s has become one of the best-selling science fiction book series of all time, selling more than sixteen million copies worldwide42 since 1979. The Hitchhiker’s series began as a six-episode radio drama (also for BBC Radio 4) in 1978, with the events of that series becoming the plot for Douglas Adams’ first novel published the following year. My presentation of a science fiction radio play for a live theatre audience (@lantis) follows in a strong tradition of such formal experiments.

To conclude this discussion of radio plays, I wish to make it clear that although @lanits straddles both the mediums of Theatre and Radio given the nature of its dual consumption methods of staged radio play and audio radio play, it was written, directed,

41 This figure is a matter of some light-hearted debate. Season IX of Red Dwarf doesn’t exist in our reality, it was never commissioned or recorded, but it does exist within the canon of the show itself. The three episodes of the mini-series Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009) are treated as the unofficial ninth season by its fans. 42 Figure sourced from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2971637/Sixth-Hitchhikers-Guide-to-be- published.html 102 and performed primarily as a work of Theatre. The stage performances of @lantis are not a live recording of an audio drama in which the public are invited to watch, they are works of theatre in their own right. The cast and crew who helped create the show and engaged with the work did so from a mindset of creating a theatrical work. The performances were staged in the Nexus Theatre – a 168 seat performance venue located on Murdoch University’s South Street campus in Murdoch, Western Australia – because it was designed to be a play. Had I decided to create the show as an audio drama rather than a staged radio play, I would have made a number of different decisions in how the show was put together:

1. I would have elected to record the audio in a space designed for capturing sound such as a radio suite or film studio, instead of in a theatre not designed for such a purpose. 2. The cast would have likely been smaller, as I would not have had to cast as many actors to effectively record the lines as I did for the theatrical production. 3. The audio would not have been recorded in one continuous take. Scenes would have been recorded separately from one another, likely not in a chronological order, and dependant on performer availability. 4. The lead actors wore costumes and makeup for the @lantis stage shows for the benefit of the live theatre audience and to enhance their characters in the stage space. The ensemble actors were dressed in @lantis branded black shirts and black trousers to create a unified look for the watching audience. These practices would not have been undertaken for a studio recording of lines for an exclusively audio drama, as there would be no audience for these visual elements to be necessary. 5. Other visual elements such as the animated video title cards played at the start of each episode, the lighting design, and the set dressing would have not been utilised at all, as there would be no need for them in a purely audio drama adaptation of the scripts.

In my role as the writer, I designed the scripts for @lantis to work as both audio-only episodes and theatrical productions. As the director though, I treated the performances as solely a theatrically staged radio play. I made creative decisions to benefit the

103 theatrical production, as a live performance of a staged radio play cannot be fixed after the fact. The audio version is more adaptable; lines flubbed in one performance by the actors can be replaced with their performance from the second night or if necessary be re-recorded. Foley sound effects that might have not been captured clearly by the microphones during the performances can be recorded again. Once the live performance of @lantis was staged it became a completed work, mistakes and all. As such, and as I was interacting with this performative research as a theatre maker, the staged performances of @lantis were constructed, performed, and should thus be viewed as a theatrical work. The video recordings of the seven @lantis staged radio plays provided to the examiners are to demonstrate how the finalised production was staged. The audio recordings are the second version of the same text but presented in the non- theatrical format of the radio play as audio drama.

Theatre, virtual/augmented reality, & immersive experiences

For thousands of years, theatrical practitioners have sought to shape the stage into a transformative space through the use of special effects and technology. Actors have worn masks, makeup, and costumes to change their appearance and become different people. Sets of increasing complexity have sought to create the world of the text and make them visceral. Lights of immense variety can transform a stage into a bright sunny desert, a rainy evening in a harbourside town, or a storm in the middle of an apocalypse. Sound effects, foley desks, live music, orchestra pits, and other forms of audio engineering have allowed even the barest of stages to evoke fantastical vistas through the power of suggestion effectively. The stage itself can be multi-layered, revolving, tilting, surrounding the audience or inversely have the audience surrounding it. Theatre, in short, has always used the tools available to its practitioners to create immersion. Which is why the development of virtual and augmented reality programs, and the rise of immersive theatre experiences, are proving to be the next significant innovations in theatrical practice and areas in which science fiction theatre could flourish like never before.

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In late 2019, an interviewer with Forbes magazine asked the National Theatre’s head of digital development, Toby Coffey, about emergent technologies in the theatre. He spoke of his support for them, stating:

One of the most exciting things for me is seeing writers, directors and designers work with Creative Technologists and to see their excitement as they explore new ways for them to take their craft of storytelling to audiences. [..] We (the National Theatre) recognize how significant this opportunity is and are doing it to develop new forms of performance, new forms of audience experience, and new forms of storytelling. But, it has to be done right and to the same levels of excellence that we employ for the work on our stages. The storytellers need to lead the use of the technology, not the other way round.

(Rogers, 2019)

The use of technology is an area in which science fiction might have an advantage over other genres in the theatre. Science fiction is the genre of technology, and as such, the use of new innovative technologies can be better justified and implemented within science fiction works than elsewhere. One could adapt Romeo & Juliet (1597) into a virtual reality experience, but what would be the purpose? How could you explain to an audience that being able to witness the balcony scene from Romeo or Juliet’s perspectives would enhance the work?43 Whereas science fiction texts, many predicated around outlandish, impossible situations, settings, and circumstances, could benefit from the use of such technologies.

RawTransport™ is one such show that attempts to utilise these emergent technologies. A select audience of three people is brought into the performance space by an employee of the titular company of the play. Transportation staff invite them to sit in three chairs in the centre of the otherwise empty performance space, put on a plastic mackintosh over their clothing and listen to the rules of the virtual holiday they are about to experience. After ascertaining if any of the participants have any allergies by having them fill out paperwork agreeing to partake in the RawTransport™ experience, they don virtual reality headsets, and the experience begins. Inside the virtual world of RawTransport™, a reassuringly calm voice invites the audience to look at several pre-

43 Just to be clear, I am not fundamentally against a production of Romeo & Juliet: The VR Experience. 105 recorded locations including the centre of a forest, the beach, inside a log cabin, and so on. The ‘performers’, unseen by the audience, begin to enhance the experience by stimulating the participant’s senses of touch, smell, and taste at appropriate moments. At one point, a staff member within the virtual presentation offers the video headset wearer a drink containing a straw while outside of the headset, a performer holds a glass of lemonade with a straw under the participant’s face. Thus, the audience member can taste what appears to them to be a virtual drink. Virtual and live actions combine to develop a sense of immersion. When the program starts to break down, and an unnamed character claiming to be the trapped mind of the RawTransport™ program creator starts to manipulate the experience, the audience more readily believes this character is speaking to them. While the performance was effective, this particular form of VR theatre limits the sorts of stories one can tell. It also severely curtails the audience numbers, with a performer required for each participant to correctly influence and stimulate them from outside of the headset experience. It can be quite an isolating experience, as you cannot see your fellow headset-wearing companions while experiencing RawTransport™. You are on your own, making the production feel a bit more like an interactive film than a work of theatre.

The theatrical experience is one of the most involving and immersive on offer for an audience in any entertainment medium, and the social cohesion between audience and performer – and between individual audience members as well – is an important component of that experience. The ‘action’ is taking place before you, in real time, in the ‘real world’. There is no division created by paper or screen. You could get up from your seat, climb onto the stage, and walk through Denmark with Hamlet, or wait for Godot with Vladamir and Estragon.44 In some cases, audiences are encouraged or invited to enter the performance space,45 or they may find themselves inundated by cast members while seated, as is the case with many of the Shakespearian productions staged by the Pop-up Globe.46 Productions such as the New York-based Sleep No More

44 You absolutely SHOULD NOT enter a performance space uninvited, no matter how suspended your disbelief is. 45 Such as at the end of Strictly Ballroom the Musical where audience members are invited to take part in the final dance number on stage with the performers. 46 The Pop-up Globe is a New Zealand-based theatre company that perform Elizabethan and Jacobian plays (namely those written by William Shakespeare) in a portable replica of The Globe Theatre in London. This ‘pop-up’ theatre has toured both New Zealand and Australia, with the company having announced plans to tour internationally from 2020 (prior to the Covid-19 outbreak). 106

(2011) are designed around the concept of total immersion by creating spaces in which the act of exploration by an audience is part of the performance itself. In this immersive theatre, the audience is on the same side of the fourth wall as the performers; they are part of the world of the production.

Sleep No More, a Hitchcockian-style re-telling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) is staged in a multi-storey warehouse whose interior is dressed to appear like a 1930’s hotel and its surrounding environs. The performers and audience are free to explore both the environment and narrative over three-hours:

Sleep allows its “guests” great freedom. Presented with a bone- white Venetian beak mask (the kind favored by plague doctors in the Renaissance), you’re invited to gawk, shame-free, at whatever you see, to rifle through drawers, files, Rolodexes, and even coffins. You and your fellow voyeurs, enskulled in your morbid headgear, quickly become part of the creepy scenery. More to the point, you’re a ghost. (N.B.: This doesn’t exempt you from actor contact — in fact, you’re practically guaranteed to be interfered with at some point in the approximately three hours it takes to survey the space and absorb the long arc of the story.)

(Brown, 2011)

It was my great fortune to attend a performance of Sleep No More in January 2017. I was captivated by the experience, during which time I found myself wandering through facsimiles of a hotel, a forest, a graveyard, and a cobbled street with storefronts. I was able to enter one of the shops, open a set of filing cabinets, and pull out a manila folder with detailed notes on some of the characters I had already seen in the space. I could have spent the entire duration of the performance seated in that office, reading files and watching my fellow ghostly audience members wander through the streets, had I elected to do so. The multi-sensory interactivity of Sleep No More had a profound impact upon me both as an audience member and as a theatrical practitioner. I felt transported to another world in a way no other form of live performance had achieved previously. I believed so much more in the world of the text because the venue allowed the text to push back against me. I was drawn into the Macbeth narrative, though known to me already, because I wanted to see how it was going to be told.

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How would a science fiction production look if it were staged like Sleep No More? Could it be done? Indeed, I would argue such a performance would be possible, with a suitable text (adapted or original) and the right resources. Would it work, though? By which I mean, would it find its audience? I believe so. I know I would jump at the chance to explore an alien world or walk the corridors of the Starship Enterprise, particularly if I was following in the footsteps of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock as they raced to the bridge. Presenting people with the opportunity to engage with the text in a new format will usually be an attractive proposition. If people are engrossed in their chosen genre, their ‘fandom’ dictates a desire for a greater level of involvement. The question I started asking myself after seeing Sleep No More was ‘why there is no science fiction experience akin to Sleep No More?’ Perhaps this more experimental direction could be an area that science fiction theatre and live performance can establish itself within. I then ask what would reflections on such a performance add to research on science fiction?

The push to experiment with the form in which science fiction live performance takes place may have already begun. In late 2018, I attended a production staged at Murdoch University called The Desecration of Your Mum (2018), an original work that was part of an undergraduate unit. Desecration was a loose adaptation of Shelley’s Frankenstein novel and other writings, and of more recent media that followed a similar thematic vein, such as Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Set designers transformed the Nexus Theatre and its connected backstage area into a performance space through which the performers and audience could move freely and interact with several concurrently run scenes. This millennial-themed adaptation was filled with pop culture references from 1990’s and 2000’s media and used the Frankenstein story as an allegory for childbirth; allowing the text and performers to explore different facets of motherhood. Although staged in a much smaller space and with significantly fewer resources than Sleep No More, Desecration achieved an immersive quality rarely seen or experienced in my time attending productions in Murdoch University’s performance venues.47 While I was more aware of the act of observing a production during Desecration than I was with Sleep, the former had me drawn into its simple narrative by its strong performances and the space which I was free to explore. More than once, I

47 I estimate I have seen over fifty Murdoch-based productions between 2007 and 2020. 108 found my explorations rewarded with experiences missed out on by that the majority of those watching the larger set pieces.

The War of the Worlds continues enhancing its credentials as one of science fiction’s most adaptable works by also being the subject of a two-hour immersive theatrical experience, with Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience. This adaptation of Wayne’s concept album, and Welles’ novel, mixes live performance, VR scenarios, puzzle solving, planetarium-style visual displays, and holographic projections to help its audience experience late-nineteenth century England with Martians invading. I attended the production, which is performed in the heart of central London at a specialised venue with attached bar & restaurant, in December 2019 when I attended the TALOS Festival. It was an incredibly exciting and well executed experience. While it lacked the freedom of movement an audience member could engage in with Sleep No More or The Desecration of Your Mum,48 Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience gave its participants a carefully curated experience. In the VR sections where audience members witnessed the tripods attacking London, the full scale and size of these gargantuan contraptions was imposing to witness. The VR section depicting a naval battle against the tripods, in which the audience wears VR headsets while seated in articulated seats that replicate the movement of rowboats tossed around on a violent ocean, with the track ‘Thunder Child’ playing over the top of the ferocious sea skirmish was thrilling. The presence of professional actors who played the parts of soldiers, nurses, astronomers, and desperate survivors guiding the audience – who were treated throughout as refugees from the initial Martian attacks – to safety aided the experience. It was highly enjoyable and an effective method of re-telling the WOTW narrative, continuing in the performative traditions of Welles and Koch’s radio play and Wayne’s arena shows.

Experimental, explorative science fiction themed productions such as The Desecration of Your Mum, and Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience, and VR productions including RawTransport™ have their place in the theatre. They can draw in audiences that may not attend more traditional fare. However, they do not address the more extensive changes theatrical practitioners need

48 Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience guides its audience along a predetermined routine, with deviations not permitted. 109 to make to best utilise the science fiction genre. Spaces such as the fictional McKittrick hotel of Sleep No More are hard to come by, with producers having to tailor the venue to the specific requirements of each production. The vast majority of theatre and other live performance work occurs in traditional spaces, with stages for the performers to act upon and an auditorium filled with seats for the audience. For science fiction to grow and thrive in the theatre, it must flourish in the centre stage as well as out in the wings.

An Android Prepares – Robots and Artificial Intelligences as actors in the theatre

The final integration of technology into the theatre I examine in this chapter is a small but emergent area of science fiction in theatre – the use of robot performers. Not puppets, but fully automatous machines built to perform on the stage, sometimes alone but usually alongside human actors. Advancements in robotics over the latter half of the twentieth century and during the first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen robots play a more significant role in our societies. From the giant mechanised arms that build our cars to the Roombas that vacuum up dirt as they trundle independently across our floors, robots are an increasing presence in our lives. Our ideas around what they do, how they look, and how we interact with them have changed as well. The images of mechanised assistants like Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet and Rosie the Maid from The Jetsons (1962) can appear outdated to a modern audience, although such depictions remain in much of our science fiction. Still, we are becoming increasingly aware that our artificial companions need not necessarily replicate the image of their creators.

One of the earliest notable works of theatre which used robotic performers was Heddatron: A Play (2006), in which robots abduct a woman and force her to perform Henrik Ibsen’s play, Hedda Gabler (1891) with them. A review of the show in The New York Times was mostly positive, with particular praise for the performances of the robotic actors:

Jane finds herself in an enchanted jungle ruled by robots, who demand that she portray Ibsen's Hedda, while they (with a little assistance from Ibsen himself) play all the supporting roles. In addition to Jane's robot abductors, there is a glorious cavalcade of less anthropomorphic types: a scurrying black suitcase-like 110

creature in a white wig (for Ibsen's Judge Brack); a balletic walking broom (as the maid, Berta); a silver two-sided daguerreotype figure (as Auntie Julie); and my personal favorite, a creeping cluster of vine leaves. The robots have terrific comic timing. (Auntie Julie announces that she won't sit down, per Ibsen's script, just after the robot playing her bumps blindly into a chair.) But beyond that, what could have been merely a novelty stunt, or a facile comment on sensitive souls in a dehumanized world, becomes an exultant celebration of the cathartic powers of theater.

(Brantley, 2006)

It is encouraging to see that the use of this emergent technology was not immediately dismissed out of hand by the critics and that they acknowledged the possibility that audiences and theatrical practitioners alike could easily view the use of robot performers as a gimmick. For such technologies to develop within the theatrical space, they must play legitimate parts in expressing a story. A robot playing a role ‘just because we can do it’ will likely not lead to a high-quality performance or production. Heddatron: A Play appears to have been able to effectively utilise its android performers by casting them as characters who were robots. These roles were created for the robots as much as they themselves were built to perform them.

Dr. Louise LePage of the University of York has written extensively about the area of robots in theatrical performance. In her essay ‘Thinking Something Makes It So’: Performing Robots, the Workings of Mimesis and the Importance of Character (2016) she explores many aspects around the concept of robotic performance and provides a breakdown of key theatrical productions, which have utilised robots as actors. LePage examines several productions featuring android actors from the 2010’s, with a particular focus on Three Sisters: Android Version (2012), an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters (1900) by Japanese director Oriza Hirata, in which an android plays the character of Ikumi49. Through these productions and the increasing amount of societal interactions humans are having with robots outside of the theatre space, LePage asserts that

49 ‘Irina’ in Chekov’s original script. Three Sisters: Android Version is set in a near-future version of Japan and as such the characters have had their names changed from their original Russian names to more geographically and culturally appropriate Japanese names. 111 theatrical practitioners are becoming increasingly aware of how to utilise their robotic performers best:

Today, intelligent, autonomous robots are no longer fully fantastical entities, postulated in futuristic, science-fictional terms, which are far advanced of current knowledge; they are becoming science-fact, and this carries implications for modes and styles of robot performance and for associated audience reception. So although irony and self-consciousness abound in Meriwether’s 2006 production of Heddatron, in which the robots’ performance of sexualized and gendered identities might be described as loud and knowing failures, framed by postmodernist pastiche and cynicism, such qualities are markedly absent, or overwhelmed by other characteristics, in the later plays to which I allude in this chapter. In place of irony there is, increasingly, a tendency towards sincerity arising from an assumption that the future ubiquity of robots is self-evident and natural. While stage robots persist as objects of wonder, they also find more mundane and realistic forms in posthumanist living rooms and scenarios, which cast humans and robots in quotidian subject positions as kinds of kin.

(LePage, 2016, p. 342)

In the nascent field of science fiction in the theatre, the use of robotic performers is practically embryonic. We are at the very beginning of robots and androids becoming part of the theatre; it may take several decades for the practice to develop further than being an occasional stage oddity. However, if robots in live performance garner critical acclaim and prove commercially viable, the science fiction genre is better placed than any other to benefit and glide through the cultural slipstream that ‘robot theatre’ leaves in its wake. More than one hundred years after the robots of R.U.R first graced the stage and gave science fiction in the theatre its most significant moment, would it not be fitting to see actual robots pave the way for a Golden Age of science fiction plays?

Conclusion

When a science fiction show does not work, when it fails to connect with its audience or the subject matter, the show can find itself on the end of savage criticism that harms the production and the genre. The Blue Flame is widely regarded as one of

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Broadway’s great historical flops and was subject to “a panning orgy” (Genini, 2012, p. 85) from the critics that saw it. Given the scarcity of science fiction productions that followed it, those whose only exposure to such a show was The Blue Flame might draw on that single production’s faults as evidence that the genre does not belong on the stage. This assumption is a problem that science fiction theatre must confront. Science fiction literature managed to shake off the pulp tag with the work of editors such as John W. Campbell demanding a better standard from the writers contributing to Astounding Stories. The visual effects work of films such as Star Wars and Jurassic Park changed the audience’s expectations of visual storytelling of science fiction cinema. Science fiction theatre still awaits that catalyst, that triggering change that can showcase the best of both the genre and the medium. A ‘Golden Age’ of science fiction theatre could arise if the genre can produce its first great playwrights. The next generation of writers, actors, and directors might not get there, but they could well take that next small step forward that becomes a giant leap for science fiction. In the next chapter, I discuss my contribution to contemporary science fiction theatre with the practical component of my research: @lantis.

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Chapter Five – My Theatre Praxis

This chapter details the theatrical praxis process I undertook in staging the main creative component of the thesis; the stage show ‘@lantis’ (2018). It includes a brief history of my work as a writer and director of original science fiction theatre before ‘@lantis’, how I developed and staged ‘@lantis’ as a theatre maker, breakdowns of the individual episodes and main characters, and a rundown of how the production progressed over the seven- week run of the show.

Introduction

In this chapter, I present my theatrical praxis: the radio-play stage show @lantis. The discussion of @lantis includes an examination of my previous science fiction play Thaw, which I wrote as part of my Honours studies, and the ways that production influenced @lantis. I detail the process of writing @lantis, including how I decided upon the setting, characters, and themes. I provide a detailed analysis of the production process and the performance period and a summation of my reflections on this process. As such, it is my recommendation that anyone reading this paper take the time to either listen to50 or watch at least one of the recordings of the @lantis series, or to read the script of Episode One: Fish Out of Water in the appendices before continuing with this chapter. It is not a pre-requisite to understand what I discuss here, but it will provide additional context you may find useful.

The praxis process allowed me – in my roles as a researcher, a creator of original science fiction texts, and a theatre maker – to directly engage with the medium of theatre to experience first-hand the benefits of live performance for science fiction. It also allowed me to see what the practice of theatre could do for my original science fiction work that other mediums could not. The findings and processes discussed in this chapter will be used in Chapters Seven and Eight of this exegesis to answer the related central research questions regarding what theatre and live performance as an entertainment medium uniquely offers to the science fiction genre.

50 Audio episodes are available to listen to at the following link: https://www.atlantisradioplay.com/ 115

Pre-Praxis: A brief history of ‘Thaw’

As part of my Honours studies examining the history of science fiction in theatre, I wrote, directed, and staged an original science fiction production to gain an understanding of how the genre functioned within the theatre. This production, titled Thaw: A Science Fiction Play, was a one-hour single act play staged in a black box theatre.51 Production elements were kept simple for showcasing that theatrical science fiction productions did not necessarily require the visual effects audiences expect from the science fiction texts of the cinema and television, as well as due to budgetary constraints. The scientific theory/practice of Cryonics,52 in which people (usually the terminally ill) have their brain/head/body preserved in ice upon their death, in the hope that future technological developments can revive them and cure their ailments, influenced the narrative. In Thaw, seven patients in a cryonics facility woke prematurely to discover the facility they are housed in is suffering from power problems, and no facility staff are there.

Thaw achieved several outcomes for my Honours studies, the first outcome of which was proving that an original science fiction text could be produced with limited resources and be well-received. Audiences were generally positive in their feedback, with one reviewer from the Independent Theatre Association stating that “Sci-Fi is not normally my favourite style, but I really enjoyed this play. It was so much more than being blinded by weird science; the storyline was solid, with a clever, unexpected ending.” (Thaw reviewed by ‘Gordon the Optom’, 23/08/2015) The second outcome was that Thaw gave me the experience of working on a science fiction theatre show, an experience which I did not have before commencing my research. This newfound knowledge about the practice of putting on a science fiction stage show was key for me to relate my experiences with that of other practitioners of science fiction theatre, as well as preparing me for the potential of staging a more complex science fiction production as part of my planned PhD research.

51 Black Box theatre refers to the practice of staging theatrical productions in simple performance spaces, usually a flat floor-level stage with black walls surrounding it. Black Box theatre productions usually, but do not always, favour minimalistic usage of sets, backdrops, costumes, and make up, relying instead on lighting, sound, performer physicality, and the content of the text being performed to convey the setting, messages, and themes of the play. 52 In science fiction it is often incorrectly referred to as ‘Cryogenics’, which is the study of cold things in general. 116

Building @lantis: Creating a science fiction world for the stage

I began the writing process for @lantis in July 2016 as I commenced my PhD studies. Knowing that the production was due to be staged at some point in 2018, I had approximately eighteen months to plot out the production. I decided early on that I wanted to produce an episodic radio play series for the following reasons:

1.) Having already staged a traditional one-act science fiction play with Thaw, I wanted to put on a different form of live theatre or performance to explore alternative staging methods. 2.) I was interested in exploring what the radio play format had to offer to the genre. Radio has a long history with science fiction. Aside from the infamous 1938 adaptation of The War of the Worlds that starred Orson Wells, radio and radio plays have proven a fertile breeding ground for new science fiction content, particularly in science fiction comedy. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf can trace their origins back to radio productions before being adapted into novels, television shows, movies, and more. The radio play format offered Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers), Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (Red Dwarf) a medium in which they could focus on building narratives that permitted the wilder eccentric settings and characters they wanted to use without the need to create compelling visual imagery to accompany these concepts on low budgets. Theatrically, radio plays offer practitioners a similar level of narrative and creative freedom whilst eschewing the sometimes troublesome element of effective visual fidelity. 3.) I was keen to explore narrative and storytelling in science fiction through serialisation and episodic formats. Although I intended that each episode of @lantis would function as an individual story, the six different plots had the same setting and characters. I was interested to know if and how this would work. Additionally, episodic storytelling in the theatre is somewhat rare, so I was keen to explore how audiences would engage with a narrative told over multiple weeks.

With these factors in mind, I spent the first six months of the writing process figuring out what sort of science fiction stories I wanted to tell, as well as finding a format to suit the episodic nature of radio plays. The initial concept was to have a central location; 117

@lantis, an underwater domed megastructure housing a community of scientists, in which the episodes all played out. I wanted a setting that could be easily explained and fit within the audience’s wider canonical understanding of the science fiction genre, while still feeling unique and evoking a sense of otherworldly mystery. Taking the concept of the mythological city of Atlantis from Ancient Greek culture and modernising it allowed me to achieve this.

The city of @lantis and the future projections of the world around it allowed me to examine key science fiction concepts, utopias and dystopias. Predictions of future worlds in fictional works tend to be either utopic or dystopic; such settings are rarely shown as being both. To tie the world of @lantis more closely to the world of the audience, I felt it was necessary to show that the future Earth possessed developments that fit into both categories. For example, the fictional advancements in brain and memory-based medicinal practices showcased in Episode Seven (It’s a Wonderful Mind) can help those with conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease to maintain a level of physical independence by repairing damaged neural pathways (utopic). However, this same advancement allows advertisements to be inserted directly into the minds of sleeping people against their will (dystopic). It is uncommon that technological or scientific developments in the real world possess only positive or negative effects, so I felt it was important that the more fantastical concepts in @lantis included similarly mixed consequences.

The wide range of science fiction texts I engaged with before and during the writing process influenced my development of @lantis. The biggest inspiration for the series was the afore-mentioned British television show Red Dwarf, a sit-com set on the titular spaceship three million years away from Earth. Humorous, character-driven storylines propel the narrative and give the high-concept scientific manipulations additional value or stakes. I attempted to replicate this format in my @lantis scripts, as it gives the audience dramatic elements to invest in emotionally. An unintended consequence of this emulation was that the twelfth season of Red Dwarf – written by Doug Naylor around the same time as I wrote the scripts for @lantis – shared some story themes with @lantis. Both series featured episodes in which: a non-human character stood as a candidate in an election against a human colleague (‘Mechocracy’ S12 E04 of Red Dwarf, ‘Good Night, and Good Lug’ E06 of @lantis); replicants of famous historical figures, living

118 together in the future (‘Cured’ S12 E01 of Red Dwarf, ‘Timeshare’ E03 of @lantis); and, powerful corporations able to affect the mental state of people (‘M-Corp’ S12 E05 of Red Dwarf, ‘It’s a Wonderful Mind’ E07 of @lantis). Given that both myself and Naylor were writing around the same time in the same field of science fiction comedy, it is perhaps unsurprising that our stories should have some crossover. I am pleased to report that despite the similarity in themes, the stories told in the two series are quite different from one another.

Another influential text was the television series Space: 1999 (1975). I first saw this program as a child in the late 1990’s when re-runs aired on British television. It concerns the inhabitants of a moon base in the year 1999 who must do what they can to survive after a nuclear explosion blows the Moon out of Earth’s orbit. Both Space: 1999 and Red Dwarf feature a cast of characters isolated in deep space. While I was interested in having my characters and story settings taking place in a remote location, I did not want to limit story possibilities by having the series set in deep space. Keeping the setting on Earth allowed for a greater range of story options. Additionally, deep sea science fiction stories and adventures are less common than space-based adventures, so the underwater setting felt more alluring to me.

With regards to radio science fiction, a big influence was the original BBC radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This absurd comedy was the first incarnation of the Hitchhiker’s series, which Douglas Adams adapted into the best-selling book of the same name in 1979. The Hitchhiker’s radio series was as daring and adventurous as its subsequent incarnations in literature, television, video games, and film, and it was the initial twelve episodes that would form a template for what I attempted to create with @lantis.

After figuring out the setting for @lantis and the central concept of the show following the exploits of a scientific research team pushing the boundaries of scientific understanding, I moved on to creating the central characters of the show. Initially, I devised a central team of four protagonists that would feature in every episode. These characters developed into Dorothy, Jules, Mary, and Lug in the final scripts and performances. During the development of the pilot script Fish out of Water, the character Harry was born from a need for an engineer on the Ponderlust team, and for some moral balance. The sixth and final protagonist I developed was the Artificial 119

Intelligence IRIS, who did not appear until after the drafting of the second episode (Data Protection). What follows is a brief description of each protagonist’s development during the writing process and the influences that formed them.

Character Breakdowns

Captain Dorothy Rosanna Goddard

Image 1 - Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard (Leitch, 2018.) Dorothy is the ‘everyman(sic)’ character, a non-scientist. She serves as a point of relatability for the audience. As she is not as scientifically literate as the rest of the main characters, others often explained the science fiction concepts to her in a manner that both she and the audience can understand. A character explains a scientific concept to

120 her at least once in every episode of @lantis (Eg: the use of Quantum Entanglement in Timeshare, the science behind the dream-based commercials in It’s a Wonderful Mind). Traditionally, the characters who play the role of text-to-audience conduit have been depicted as younger people, usually female, and are only part of the team due to a relationship with a scientific character (a niece/nephew, daughter/son, partner, protegee, etc). Dorothy had to serve a function within the story that gave her agency and challenged the sexism inherent in such depictions. Given that these sorts of characters usually end up as damsels-in-distress at the mercy of some monstrous terror, I decided to flip that stereotype and make Dorothy skilled and adept in physical confrontations. She became the security officer.

Dorothy is by no means a well-rounded individual. I wanted all of the main characters in Ponderlust Labs to have significant flaws, like the leads in popular sit-coms such as Seinfeld (1989) and Frasier (1993), to derive humour from. In this sense, Dorothy is most like the character of Elaine from Seinfeld: both are arrogant, bossy, jump to conclusions, and occasionally reckless. However, Dorothy is a quick thinker in high-stress situations, and will always look for the safest way to get others out of trouble. Science fiction characters she shares traits with are leads from films of the late 70’s and early 80’s: Ellen Ripley from the Alien series, Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, and MacReady from John Carpenter’s The Thing; no-nonsense, get the job done sort of people who are resourceful in a tight spot and capable of overcoming their fears when in great peril.

Professor Jules Stanley Quine

Jules is the character who most closely fits into the archetype of ‘Mad Genius’ that features heavily in science fiction. All areas of life other than his discipline (Physics) are of little concern to him. Jules is antagonistic towards his fellow workers. He has a superiority complex, which later in the series, the audience learns is partly due to his self-perceived inferiority to his work partner, Mary. In terms of existing fictional characters, Jules is similar to Dr. Gregory House (House (2004)), Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty (2013)), Frank Burns (M*A*S*H* (1972)), and Arnold Rimmer (Red Dwarf). Many of these characters remain primarily connected to their irredeemable flaws throughout the run of their narratives (Dr. House is rude to his patients, Rimmer is a selfish coward, etc). While Jules retains his negative traits (mostly dismissive of the feelings of others, self-centred, prone to outbursts of anger over minor inconveniences), he learns and 121 grows into a more responsible team member. He accepts his role as IRIS’s guardian/father figure after the events of Episode Two (Data Protection), and while he does what he can to help Mary during her crisis in Episode Seven (It’s a Wonderful Mind), he ultimately does not force his will on her at the climax of the story. Jules allows Mary to choose whether or not she removes her memories of her deceased wife and will accept her for who she wants to be. I felt it was important for all of the main characters in @lantis to showcase some level of personal development and to be shaped by their experiences of the season-long narrative. For Jules and his many flaws, this was perhaps of most importance or else he risked becoming a flat pantomimic caricature.

Image 2 - Murray Jackson as Prof. Jules Quine (Leitch, 2018.)

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Doctor Mary Benita Pote

Image 3 - Tegan Mulvany as Dr. Mary Pote (Leitch, 2018.) Mary is the benevolent Doctor of Biology for Ponderlust Labs and a responsible mentor to those in her charge. She is the antithesis to Jules; polite, friendly, and plays well with others. She also has a mindset to push the limits of scientific knowledge, even if it endangers others. Mary’s capacity for going too far contrasts directly with Jules, who will relent when he realises he is pushing things too far or risking someone’s life. In the early planning stages of the series, Mary initially began life as a non-human entity (possibly alien in origin) before I decided to keep the events of @lantis strictly Earth- based. Mary is an amalgamation of various versions of the Doctor from Doctor Who, namely the portrayals of Patrick Troughton, Sylvester McCoy, and Matt Smith. She also has similarities with fictional scientists including Dr. Grace Augustine from Avatar

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(2009), Professor Farnsworth from Futurama (1999) and Dr. Ellie Sattler from Jurassic Park.

Senior Technician Harrison ‘Harry’ John Kinvig

Image 4 - Max Rankin as Senior Technician Harrison 'Harry' Kinvig (Leitch, 2018.) The dogsbody of the Ponderlust team, Harry was the character I had the most challenging time writing. Initially, he was a much more confident lackey figure working under Jules, similar in manner to Baldrick in the early seasons of Blackadder (1983). This willing minion version of Harry did not work well in previous drafts, and I briefly considered cutting the character altogether and only having four main characters.53 I then hit upon a character trait that was sorely lacking from the other characters: doubt. Dorothy, Mary, Jules, and Lug are all – in their own ways – very confident people. They do not display weakness openly, and I realised that was a problem as it made them

53 This was before IRIS became a recurring character following the completion of the scripts for the second episode ‘Data Protection.’ 124 somewhat boring and unrealistic as a central cast of characters. While I worked to make their flaws more pronounced, I now had a role for Harry; the voice of worried concern. In this respect, Harry has similarities to Radar O’Reilly (M*A*S*H*), and Lord Percy (Blackadder).

His role in the team is Senior Engineer, meaning he is usually the person Mary and Jules turn to when they need the machinery for their convoluted contraptions to operate. Like the most famous science fiction engineer (Scotty from Star Trek), Harry has a Scottish accent. This was not intentional; it was the natural speaking voice of his actor (Max Rankin). I decided to keep our lead performers speaking in their natural accents54 (with some minor tweaks such as Lug’s deep pitch and Mary’s nasally voice) to make the characters sound as natural as possible.

Deputy Technician Lug

Science fiction stories have contained a man-made ‘other’ since before the genre was called science fiction. From The Creature in Frankenstein to Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet, Kryten in Red Dwarf, Marvin the Paranoid Android in Hitchhiker’s, and C-3PO & R2-D2 in the Star Wars films; the non-human entity existing and interacting with human characters is a common a trope in science fiction. In @lantis, two main characters operate in this role of ‘The Other’. One is IRIS (who fits into the sub-category of an Artificial Intelligence, more on that later) and the other is Lug.

Lug was the character I had the most solidified concept for early on. I asked myself the hypothetical question: “What if The Creature in Frankenstein helped Victor in his lab instead of destroying him?” Had Victor embraced the Creature from the start and not rejected him, subjecting this new lifeform to the trials and persecution that followed his birth, what would he have become? My answer is something a little like Lug. A part-organic, part-artificial being with immense physical strength and little cultural or social understanding, Lug is a wonderful character to write for in a comedy script. Misunderstandings about human traditions and customs, the English language, and life, in general, provided a good foundation for humour.

54 With the exception of IRIS, whose voice was modulated live via the microphones to sound more artificial. 125

Image 5 - Nic Doig as Deputy Technician Lug (Leitch, 2018.) Lug’s gender identity also ended up being an important and occasionally humorous part of their character. Initially, I conceived Lug as a male character before realising that their creator (Mary) would have likely not bothered to designate a gender. Thus, Lug has no gender, something which they explain to everyone that misgenders them.55 This aspect of the character ended up being something that some audience members expressed great delight in from a ‘social progression’ perspective.

55 Once Lug had clarified their gender identity with another character in any of the scripts, the other characters always respected this. I felt that this was important to have as part of the scripts, as it demonstrates that in the futuristic setting of @lantis concepts of gender and sex-based identities beyond the binary ‘Male/Female’ homogeny are more widely accepted and understood than they are in contemporary society. 126

Image 6 - Artwork of 'Lug' by Ally Snell, 2018.

IRIS (Internal Research Intelligence System)

The sixth and final member of the Ponderlust crew is IRIS. I initially intended for her to be a single episode character, appearing in Episode Two (Data Protection). After the first draft of the script though, I realised IRIS should be a part of the regular series going forward. She serves an essential role in the labs as the A.I. interface for the human characters, and she was incredibly fun to write. I decided against retrospectively putting her into the first episode (Fish Out of Water) as there were already plenty of introductions and new characters present, and she would have served no particular purpose within the narrative.

IRIS is a fourteen-year-old A.I. program who behaves like the negative stereotype of a fourteen-year-old teenager in our world; she is rude, self-obsessed, and stroppy. Her relationship with her father-figure Jules is complicated by the fact that he initially sees her as a tool, not a person. IRIS is an A.I. with adaptive learning, so the more time she spends with people, the more she learns to behave like them. She views herself as a person, even if she is not human. The ship’s computer is ubiquitous in science fiction folklore, so I will only list the ones which influenced IRIS directly: Holly from Red Dwarf, HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, EDI from the Mass Effect (2007) series, and Samantha from Her (2013).

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Image 7 - Xarna Rappold as IRIS (Leitch, 2018) With a central cast of characters and a setting in place, I spent much of the writing process constructing the scripts and conducting research into the science fiction genre and the real-world science that would inform the narratives of the episodes. I planned out plots for each of the six episodes I originally planned to stage in the final performances. Each episode would explore a different trope or commonly recognised area of the science fiction genre, as well as exploring real-word scientific issues. These aspects that informed the narrative are discussed in the next subsection Episode Breakdowns. My reasoning for infusing the scripts of @lantis with real-world scientific developments was to keep in line with one of the strengths of the science fiction genre: the ability to inform an audience while entertaining them simultaneously. Like many 128 other science fiction texts, I used real-world science as the starting point to build my ideas. It is unlikely that we will ever cross the genes of a Human with a Siamese Fighting Fish as occurs in Fish Out of Water. This experiment came as a result of Mary attempting to find alternative methods to allow Humans to survive in an underwater environment, with a specific focus on her scientific discipline of Biology. By including questions such as this or others examined in the series (including ‘What do we do with all of the plastic litter in the world’s oceans?’ or ‘Is it ever acceptable to remove memories from someone’s brain?’), I allow the audience to consider and engage with such topics in a manner they may not have done so before. This capacity to question, wonder, and ponder, either individually or collectively, is an important feature of the science fiction genre, it being a genre predominantly defined by plots and narratives that ask questions that usually begin with “What if…?”

Episode Breakdowns

Episode One – Fish Out of Water

I decided to start the series with a traditional science fiction story; a Monster-of-the- Week tale in the manner of Doctor Who and Star Trek, where our protagonists encounter a dangerous foe and use their knowledge and individual skills to best them. The monster, named ‘The Hybrid’, was the result of an experiment in which Mary crossed Human DNA with that of Siamese Fighting Fish to see if humans could support gills as a secondary respiratory system. I partly based the design of the Hybrid (illustrated by Ally Snell, pictured below) on the titular Creature featured in the film Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), as well as physical elements of Siamese Fighting Fish. The Hybrid’s actions are a mix of Siamese Fighting Fish behaviour in nature, and classic science fiction antagonists including the Xenomorph from Alien and The Thing from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Indeed, Dorothy directly quotes Ripley from her infamous confrontation with the Xenomorph Queen in Aliens (1986) when she says to the Hybrid as it advances on the captured @lantis citizen Annika “Get away from her, you bitch!”

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Image 8 - Artwork of 'The Hybrid' by Ally Snell, 2018. Thematically speaking, Fish Out of Water is all about introductions. This episode introduces the audience to the world of Ponderlust Laboratories and the city of @lantis through Dorothy, the newly assigned security officer for Ponderlust. Not only are we introduced to the main characters in the Ponderlust team,56 but we meet key characters in the city who have varying degrees of power over our protagonists: Chief Laura Costain (Head of @lantis security), Moritz Snidal (The Bursar of @lantis), and Benjamin Shottin (President and Founder of @lantis). These secondary characters give a sense of how life in this new fictional setting works and that there is a larger world happening outside of the walls of Ponderlust Labs where we spend the majority of our time. Costain and Snidal serve two additional purposes: they are external forces that affect the way Ponderlust Labs can operate (sometimes positively, other times negatively), and they represent real-life influences that affect actual scientific practices: safety (Costain) and finance (Snidal). As the city of @lantis is concerned with generating profits from the scientists' innovations,57 Snidal’s position as the Bursar somewhat justifies his antagonism towards

56 With the exception of IRIS. 57 A factor that is mentioned in the introductory monologue of each episode. 130 the main characters and their fiscal profligacy. It sets up various points of conflict throughout the series (threatening to make Dorothy redundant, investigating the costs of Jules’s ‘Adequate Hadron Collider’, etc). Costain is less hostile towards the team,58 but her position as head of security puts her into direct conflict with the Ponderlust team when their experiments get out of control. She also mentors Dorothy, reminding her that safety should come before scientific achievement.

Safety before knowledge is a theme explored throughout the series, most directly in Fish Out of Water. The Hybrid’s escape puts the citizens of @lantis in the most direct danger they will be in for the entirety of the series59 and allows for open debate about the purpose of @lantis and what is an acceptable risk. Jules and Costain argue about this in her office after the Hybrid has killed a scientist and kidnapped a canteen worker:

JULES

This place, this whole domed city, is a refuge for the intellects of the Human race. We live here submerged in the ocean so that the scientific process can not only survive but thrive! Up there, where the people are, it’s a mess. It’s an omnishambles! You know why?

COSTAIN

Why?

JULES

Because not enough people respected the scientific process! Our ancestors were too busy living in a false utopia of exotic caffeinated beverages, simplified morality allegories disguised as superhero films and vapid pursuits of ‘happiness’ and ‘wholesomeness’, that they completely ignored the cancerous tumours slowly growing around their falsified realities. Climate change! Over-population! Dwindling resources! Things that the scientists kept saying we needed to focus on. They were ignored! By people

58 Her relationship with Mary and Jules is shown to be somewhat closer at the end of the series than in the first episode. In It’s a Wonderful Mind, it is Costain who is asked by Mary to break the news of her estranged wife’s death to Jules and the rest of the Ponderlust team. She also shows genuine care and interest in their wellbeing, even if she is still somewhat reserved in her language and mannerisms. 59 Excluding the extinction-level meteorite hurtling towards Earth in the final minute of the final episode It’s a Wonderful Mind. 131

like you, frog-in-the-pot people, who thought other things were more important because they were too stupid or vain to see the bigger picture!

COSTAIN

The only picture I am seeing is that a man is dead and a woman has been captured and it is the fault of you and your team!

(Platt, 2018, @lantis Episode 1: Fish Out of Water, pp. 45-46)

Jules argues that this attack is the sort of thing that is going to happen from time to time in a place like @lantis, while Costain feels such events are inexcusable and there need to be checks on the scientific processes Ponderlust uses. She is supported by Snidal, who was almost killed by the Hybrid and knows that shutting down Ponderlust Labs would aid him in cutting operation costs. It is Dorothy, the character with a foot in both camps, who bridges the two disparate mindsets. She uses Ponderlust’s scientific strengths to fix the security issue when she makes the connection that the Hybrid would have similar genetic defects to its human tissue donor, Harry.

The arrival of the President of @lantis Benjamin Shottin in the final scene settles the debate on safety and science (for this episode at least). His tirade against Snidal in favour of the Ponderlust team serves as a creed for the scientific characters of Jules and Mary for the rest of the series:

SHOTTIN

Mr. Snidal! I am quite aware of what happened here today! You were very thorough in your reports. Whilst it was unfortunate what took place, this is exactly why I built @lantis in the first place. This beautiful domed megastructure is not designed to protect us from the outside world. It is designed to protect the outside world from us! This city, filled with intellectuals and thinkers, inventors and tinkerers, is the razor-sharp precipice of human endeavour! Occasionally, you get a nasty cut. That’s the risk. And I encourage that risk, I welcome it. For without taking risks, we are no better than those 132

people on the surface who try to keep everything the same and maintain the status quo. If we do that, we will stagnate and fail as a species. I will not allow that to happen on my watch! Now see to it that Ponderlust labs have their funding doubled!

(Platt, 2018, @lantis Episode 1: Fish Out of Water, pg. 66)

This is not the final time the series addresses the safety issue. Shottin’s speech gives the audience a sense of the city’s purpose from its founder. His explanation legitimises some of the extreme and bizarre events that occur in the rest of the series which would, under the scientific and ethical guidelines of our real world, not be allowed to happen. Even though I wrote @lantis primarily to be a comedic text, it helps to give context to elements of the stories that would trouble the suspension of the audience’s disbelief.

Episode Two – Data Protection

Data Protection introduces the audience to the sixth member of the Ponderlust team: IRIS the Artificial Intelligence. This episode examines her relationship with her creator and father-figure Jules. He is reluctant to acknowledge her as his daughter despite her insistence in calling him “Dad” or “Father” in conversations. IRIS came about from the idea of having an A.I. character behaving in a manner not usually seen in other science fiction depictions. A.I. characters are typically calm, emotionless entities like Hal 9000, Deep Think, or the ship’s computer from Star Trek. I wanted to write an A.I. that I had not seen before, and a temperamental teenager felt like a fun concept to explore.

IRIS’s story in this episode is not dissimilar to that of many teen dramas: she makes friends with another teen and develops confusing feelings towards them, falls in with a bad crowd, rebels against authority figures, and learns important lessons after getting hurt. The only difference is that she is a supercomputer who negatively impacts an entire laboratory when she is distracted (the accidental release of the wormhole worms, sending incorrect documents, etc). Jules learns that regardless of his feelings on the matter, he is responsible for IRIS’s care to some degree. Jules does not want children of

133 his own, nor to face up to the responsibilities of his job.60 However, the events of Data Protection force him to face up to the fact that he is responsible for his digital creation, even if he is uncomfortable about her treating him like a father instead of a boss.

Image 9 - Artwork of 'Jules, IRIS, and Mary in Ponderlust Labs' by Ally Snell, 2018.' Bullying is another theme I explore in this episode. While I have been fortunate enough not to have been the victim of persistent bullying, I know several people who have and I wanted to explore the subject in a science fiction setting. The bullies in this story are the teens who IRIS befriends; Percy, Izzy, and Bart. Percy becomes IRIS’s friend after a phonar mix up with Dorothy at the beginning of the episode, and he is the one who discovers the power IRIS can wield when she accidentally uncovers the online dating profile of his History teacher. Both he, and later Izzy, abuse IRIS’s abilities for their own gain when they attempt to extort money from two fellow students. IRIS, not being aware of how everyday social interactions operate in the wider world due to spending her whole life in Ponderlust with the same four people, is manipulated into acting as cyber-muscle for the racket her ‘friends’ start up. Although IRIS questions Percy about the morality of this behaviour and suspects they are doing something wrong, she is ultimately taught about their true nature when Jules tricks Percy and Izzy into talking about how they have used IRIS unaware that she can hear them. IRIS runs them off and apologises to Jules, who in turn apologises to her for not being a good enough role model

60 This is evident throughout the series, with examples including when Mary chastises him for hiding a miniature Black Hole behind the fridge instead of sorting it out properly, wanting to get drunk instead of solving the Hybrid problem, and not telling Mary about the Timeshare Hotel. 134 and for his social neglect. The misunderstanding and apology set up the quasi-father- daughter relationship Jules and IRIS have for the rest of the series.

Episode Three – Timeshare

Timeshare began as a stand-alone concept I was developing before @lantis about a Bed & Breakfast for famous historical figures in contemporary Australia called ‘The Timeshare Hotel.’ When it came to addressing the popular science fiction trope of Time Travel, I decided to utilise the concept of the Timeshare hotel in @lantis to maintain the validity of chronology within the series. Adding Time Travel to any fictional property creates countless issues with continuity, paradoxes, and stakes. If your characters have a Time Machine, they can potentially go backwards or forwards in time to fix or avoid most problems. The ability to time travel and the narrative consequences that it presents is something I wanted to avoid in @lantis, particularly with its episodic content. The solution was to have the time-travellers come to the protagonists. To achieve this in a narratively satisfying way, I decided to manipulate existing theories behind Quantum Entanglement. It is a complicated theory to explain in full, but in its most basic form, Quantum Entanglement (or QE) occurs when a pair of particles interact in ways that mean the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the other. These particles are linked and correspond with one another no matter how far apart they are. Their momentum, polarisations, and spin values all behave the same. This theory of QE is related to the works of physicist Erwin Schrodinger, which is why I chose to make him a key character in the story. The mechanics of Jules’s ‘Time Machine’ is not really Time Travel in the traditional sense. Jules can use QE theory to find a particle that was, at one time, entangled with another that was part of the physical body of a famous historical figure. As QE particles share the same information, Jules can use a super-advanced computer (IRIS) to read that information and create a blueprint to clone whoever they find. It is convoluted and fantastical as a concept, but it allowed me to explore Time Travel in the series without building a traditional Time Machine.

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The other scientific theory I explore is that of Schrodinger’s Cat;61 the hypothetical scenario Schrodinger used to explain his idea that the act of observation causes particles to enter one particular state. Schrodinger equates this scenario to a cat being – on a quantum level at least – simultaneously both alive and dead inside a box until someone opens the box and observes the cat in one of two states: dead or alive. Given this theory is one of the most well known in Quantum Physics amongst the wider population, I felt it was essential to make use of it. There are anecdotal accounts available online that Schrodinger might have owned a cat during the 1930’s, and that its name may have been Milton, so I decided to name the cat in the story as such. Setting up a situation where Milton was in a box with two Ponderlust characters arguing about if he was alive or dead, and indirectly inspiring Schrodinger to formulate the theory back in his own time, became the primary punchline of the episode. The punchline would hopefully please audiences regardless of their knowledge of Quantum Physics.

As I spent a lot of time researching and learning theories around Quantum Physics for this episode, I decided to give Dorothy a non-scientific, Agatha Christie-style murder mystery to solve, as this would be a more straightforward story-telling device to couple with all the Quantum chat. As I had an entire cast of historical figures to choose from, I decided it would be fun to have a copycat killer re-creating famous murders and assassinations on the same people who suffered them originally (Julius Caesar is stabbed twenty-three times, Alexander the Great is poisoned, etc). Making Oscar Wilde the killer, in a Dorian Gray-style bid to maintain his unnatural new life by drinking the Quantum goo of his victims, was quite fun to set up as well.

The main point of conflict between two main characters in Timeshare came halfway through the episode when Mary confronted Jules about why he had been lying to her about the Timeshare Hotel. This argument ties into Jules’s trend of irresponsible behaviour for which Mary chastises him and exposes Mary’s desperation not to lose her position in @lantis. Her use of the Gastrophysics device against Jules demonstrates just how much she feels she needs Ponderlust and foreshadows factors of her fragile mental state explored in It’s a Wonderful Mind. While Jules and Mary argue in most episodes, it is usually low-level bickering and is occasionally playful. Timeshare features one of the

61 ‘Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik‘ (The Current Situation in Quantum Mechanics), Naturwissenschaften (Natural Sciences), 1935. 136 two serious arguments they have, the other coming at the climax of the final episode of the series.

Image 10 - Artwork of 'Oscar Wilde' by Allison Bell, 2018.

Episodes Four and Five – A Dark World and The Year of the Long Tail

Episodes Four and Five were initially to be a single episode story, but when it became clear that the story I wanted to tell would have too long a run time for a single episode, I split it into the only two-parter of the series. I intended that each episode of @lantis could be watched or listened to independently of any other, but with thematic arcs that reach across the series, calling back to previous events and foreshadowing future ones. That was not going to be a possibility for this story; it needed additional time to be

137 explained and told satisfactorily. However, I initially wrote them as a single script and therefore provide their shared thematic elements in this exegesis together.

For the first time in the series, Mary is the character in focus. Jules, with his more bombastic personality and capacity to create conflict with just about anyone, has taken a lot of the narrative focus from his Ponderlust partner. Jules’ prominence was partly the reason that when the Rattus Sapiens tranquilise him, the dart hits him in the throat. Removing a character’s capacity for speech in a radio play does limit their communication options somewhat. He does get a scene at the start of A Dark World explaining how the Quantum Suicide Device works (or in this case does not work), but once the Rats arrive, Jules is out of the story proper until Episode Five. Knowing that Mary’s defining story moment was still to come in the final episode, I wanted to give her the scientific spotlight. Given this story’s more biological focus, this was the right time to make that happen.

A Dark World was originally going to be a more light-hearted story riffing off science fiction classics such as Planet of the Apes (1968), except in this story the Apes were capturing Humans to put them into conservation for their safety instead of oppressing them. I toyed around with this idea for a little while before deciding it was not the most exciting story concept. I wanted to focus on an animal closely associated with scientific practices, and I settled on rats, mice, rabbits, and other small mammals. The reason for this was an observation I made that often medical stories in the news discuss cures for diseases and conditions like cancer and AIDS having been tested on lab rats, mice, etc. I reasoned that if scientists were curing all of these diseases through animal testing, then the surviving animals would be at an advantage over the rest of the animal kingdom. If these creatures were living longer and getting stronger as a result of Human intervention, are they not good candidates to become the next dominant species on Earth?

For the rats and other small mammals featured in the story to become advanced enough to develop language and culture in a short period of time, I figured some external factors would be needed to speed up the evolutionary process. One method would be for these animals to have some way of learning to be more like humans via some form of social elevation or Renaissance. They needed a benefactor, probably human. Initially, this could have been Mary, who might have discovered a more primitive 138 version of the species and lived amongst them à la Dr. Jane Goodall62 with chimpanzees. Eventually, a character from another science fiction play I had written previously would take this role, but I will get to that shortly.

Image 11 - Artwork of 'Bugsy' by Lorraine 'Loz' De Cruz, 2018. The other story aspect I wanted to explore was immortality. Science fiction is a framing method for many stories about eternal life, and I happened across a theory during my research on Quantum Physics for Timeshare that fit with this theme. Quantum Immortality is a theory that relies on Hugh Everett’s Multiverse Theory63 being true and states that if every possible reality occurs, then there must be one reality where a version of you never dies. The associated thought experiment involves a Quantum Suicide Device (or QSD) worn by every version of a person that randomly kills one version every sixty seconds. If Multiverse Theory is real, then there must be one reality where the QSD never kills the wearer. Jules builds one such device but attempts to rig it so the device can never kill him, leaving all other versions of him to die while he tricks his way into living forever. His concept is undermined by Harry, who correctly surmises that if this version of Jules has attempted this trick, then most other versions of him in other realities would have as well, thus rendering the QSD useless.

62 Dr Jane Goodall is an anthropologist whose studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1960’s led to key findings about the lifestyles of and social interactions between chimpanzees. 63 Multiverse theory, in one sentence, is where every possible version of existence is happening in multiple universes at the same time, with our differing choices or decisions creating multiple branches of reality. 139

I investigated other forms of science fiction life extensions. The most common of these in science fiction literature, films, and television is Cryonics. Having written, directed, and staged a science fiction play about the practice of cryonics called Thaw, I had some experience with the practice. I realised that one of the characters from that play (Dr. John Ettinger) would be the sort of character that would suit the role of ‘one- man renaissance’ for the Rattus Sapiens. Ettinger, along with four other characters, were still preserved in a Cryonic stasis at the end of Thaw. That was when I linked the events of my first science fiction production into my current series.

Image 12 - Dean Lovatt as James Bedford & Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard (Leitch, 2018.) As a writer, it was a fun crossover to work on, but for it to work, the story had to make sense to someone who had never seen Thaw. As such, Dorothy – the audience’s

140 guide – had to be introduced these characters. That is why she is the one who finds James still preserved in the cryonics facility and is also the first to be introduced to Paula, another Thaw character who was now a part of the Resistance movement against Ettinger and the Rats. The story elements of Thaw, relevant to A Dark World, were explained to Dorothy in such a way that the uninitiated listener would understand as much as she did. Fans of Thaw would get the odd additional references, such as when characters quoted lines from the original play, but nothing that would affect A Dark World. Providing elements from Thaw was quite challenging to get right. I had the first draft of these scripts read by a group of actors, some who were in Thaw and some who had not seen it, and the consensus was that there were too many story elements that did not make sense to the non-Thaw actors. These scripts were the ones that went through the most extensive re-writes. Thankfully, they ended up in a state where newer audience members were able to enjoy the story without foreknowledge of Thaw.

Episode Six – Good Night, and Good Lug

Episode Six of @lantis is the one that looks most closely at contemporary events in our world. Good Night, and Good Lug examines both the democratic election process in western nations and the effect of pollution on the oceans, specifically with regards to plastic. Lug is at the centre of a story for the first time in the series. Their role in the narrative is to stand as a proxy candidate in an election for the President of the @lantis Biological Society against Mary on Jules’s behalf.

This episode was the last one I wrote for the series, completing the first draft in January 2018. With the writing process for the series commencing in mid-2016, it is perhaps unsurprising that one of the most significant political events of those eighteen months – the 2016 American presidential election that saw Donald Trump elected into office – would influence me. Elections are a direct and open conflict of ideas, seeing how an election in the city of @lantis would look intrigued me. With its founder President Benjamin Shottin running the city, the position up for grabs would have to be less significant than a national leader, but still important enough for the characters involved to care. That is where the idea of Jules’s inferiority complex came into play.

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Image 13 - Artwork of '@lantis Election Posters' by Ally Snell, 2018. Good Night, and Good Lug was also the only episode I attempted to write in the style of a traditional sit-com, with clearly defined A and B plots. I decided to do this to examine how this style of storytelling worked in the theatre and could contrast it with other methods of science fiction storytelling. The B plot of this episode concerned the appearance of a mysterious island made up of all the plastics dumped into the ocean. I chose this as at the time of writing, stories about ocean pollution were prominent in the news cycle, and I started to think how such a massive amount of waste materials could be repurposed. I took several estimates of the amount of plastic in the ocean and figured out what size it would be if it were all clumped together. The answer was that the approximately forty million kilograms of plastics could make an object 600m in length and 300m width. That was when I came up with the idea of turning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or GPGP) into a moveable island, inhabited by pirates.

The pirate plotline about them being scavengers seeking all the chemical elements is a comical aside to an underlying message about a real-world issue. There is far too much trash in our oceans. I based the figures on late-2017 facts and figures; it is likely the GPGP has since grown. While other episodes in this series explored somewhat convoluted extrapolations of theories about hypothetical scientific practices such as time travel and Quantum Theory, the pollution issue is tangibly real and remarkably

142 serious. It is unlikely the pirate island concept in this episode will either happen in the future or lead to any action on the matter. Still, it allows the audience to think about this issue in a different context. I believe this is one of the greatest gifts science fiction has to offer us in any entertainment format, but particularly in the contemplative space that is theatre.

Episode Seven – It’s A Wonderful Mind

Science fiction Christmas stories exist, and some have become part of the holiday tradition. Since the re-boot of Doctor Who began in 2005, there has been an episode themed around Christmas aired on Christmas Day almost every year. Some families choose to watch science fiction adventure films like Star Wars or Serenity (2005) during the holidays instead of more traditionally festive films. Some science fiction texts even play around with elements of Christmas stories. For example, the film Children of Men (2006) has clear parallels with the story of the Nativity from the Bible. When I realised that the episodes of @lantis were going to take place over several months, I decided I wanted to write an episode set at Christmas and see what the holiday looked like in this science fiction setting. I am not adherent to any particular religion, but I do believe that the festive season is a significant part of our cultural and social traditions and that it is interesting to explore what it means in our fiction. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) is one of my favourite stories, festive or otherwise. I included elements of Christmas in Thaw, with a character called ‘Christmas John’ who only ever wanted to live on Christmas Day, so he froze himself for the rest of the year and came out of Cryonic Preservation on December the 25th.

The final episode of the series was always intended to be climactic in some form. Having spent six episodes getting to know these characters, I wanted to give the audience a story that rewarded their investment. It was going to be a personal story about one of the main characters and as it turned out, quite a sad one. Both of my paternal grandparents passed away during the writing process. My grandmother passed away very suddenly in early 2017, while my grandfather was eventually taken the following year by an illness my family knew of for eighteen months. It was almost a year after my grandmother passed away that I decided I wanted to write about grief as a

143 central concept of the final episode. It is a subject matter not often explored directly in the science fiction I consume. That is why this episode concerns the death of Mary’s estranged wife Eleanor, and how she attempts to use science to circumnavigate the grieving process when it all gets too much for her.

I had been playing around with the concept of brain manipulations based upon medical journals I had been reading regarding research into treating degenerative neural conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease. The Immersials or ‘Dream Advertisements’ that affect Dorothy at the beginning of this episode was the original episode concept, with Dorothy having to battle against corporate interests to have control over her dreams. After realising I wanted to focus on Mary and her grief, I used the Immersials as an introduction to the sorts of memory and thought manipulations that were to come later.

Image 14 - Artwork of 'Ghosts of @lantis Past, Present, and Future' by Allison Bell, 2018. Mary attempts to grieve but is so hurt by Eleanor’s passing that she does something drastic and tries to take control by closing off the neural pathways with memories of Eleanor. It then becomes the self-appointed task of Mary’s friends and colleagues to help her realise that her time with Eleanor is worth remembering even with the pain of her passing. The initial idea was to present this in the format of the film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), with the Ponderlust team taking on the role of the angel Clarence Odbody, showing Mary how different and awful her life would be without her memories of her 144 wife. Without the context of seeing Mary’s life with Eleanor though, this would have less impact on the audience. That was when I decided to base the trips into Mary’s mind around the visits of the three spirits from A Christmas Carol, allowing me to show Mary’s past, present, and predicted future.

The culmination of the episode, and indeed the series, is Jules and Mary talking after he reveals his ruse of acting as the S.N.A.P.E. device in her dream of Future @lantis. Jules realises that while he would love to force her to not go through with the memory wipe, it is not his decision or responsibility. He tells Mary this and reminds her that although Eleanor was her wife, they had been estranged for a long time. Eleanor was no longer part of her family and that she could return to Ponderlust and be with her ‘Found Family.’ The concept of ‘Found Family’ is one I wrote into the arc of the series, with each character forming a stronger connection to another member of the team. Dorothy begins as an outsider, makes connections with everyone and finishes the season very much a part of the Ponderlust crew. Jules and IRIS become closer through the events of Data Protection, Lug learns more of what it means to be human, and Jules values Harry more after Harry returns from his perceived death in A Dark World. Mary’s realisation of this, and her connection with the Ponderlust team, ultimately helps her to decide not to erase her memories of Eleanor and to live with the grief.

Once I had completed the initial drafts of all seven episodes, I arranged an informal get-together with some friends who have experience working in the theatre either as actors, technicians, directors, and writers and we read through them. They then all provided feedback on the scripts, detailing what they liked and disliked, what they felt worked, and what did not. From there, I took that feedback and spent the next two months making the appropriate changes and edits in time for when the rehearsals began in May 2018. I made further minor edits throughout the rehearsal process based upon the actors’ feedback, so in truth, the writing process did not end until the beginning of the performance period in August 2018.

The production process of @lantis (casting, staging, and rehearsing)

The @lantis production process officially commenced with the announcement of open auditions in March 2018. The casting call was released to several Perth-based

145 acting agencies, as well as on web-based casting platforms such as StarNow. I initially scheduled the auditions to take place over a weekend, with seventy-two ten-minute audition spots made available. To my great surprise, all seventy-two spots were booked within twenty-four hours of the audition notice going public. With more actors requesting to audition, the decision was made to add a third day of auditions, taking our total number of available audition spots to one hundred and eight. Potential actors filled the extra time within three days of the announcement. At that stage, I decided not to accept any additional physical auditions, although I did accept recorded auditions submitted online up until the last day of the regular auditions. This overwhelming response to the auditions was astounding, and beyond anything, I had previously experienced in my decade working in the local arts scene. The auditioning actors stated two main reasons that they were interested in the project: the rarity of science fiction on stage and interest in the radio play format.

The audition panel consisted of myself and the two other confirmed crew members @lantis had at that time; the Production Manager Ellin Sears and Stage Manager Sarah Courtis. Both are long-time artistic collaborators of mine who were interested in working on the project and had the experience of staging a PhD project themselves with their dystopian musical 2084 which Courtis directed and Sears choreographed. Auditioning actors had to come with a pre-prepared monologue that showcased their abilities. They were then given snippets of the @lantis scripts – mostly from the first episode Fish out of Water – and asked to perform a cold read into a microphone which was recording them. The cold read was to observe their technique working with a microphone and allow the audition panel to listen back to the auditions during the casting meeting. Their technique was an important consideration given that the performances were being recorded and released as audio productions.

A week after the auditions, I met with the audition panel to determine the casting of roles. I had decided that the actors who voiced our six leads would be primarily focussed on those roles and would only voice minor additional roles as necessary. As @lantis had a total of seventy-three speaking roles, we were looking for actors with a versatile range of voices to keep the cast number as small as possible. We wanted to ensure that we had no more than fourteen actors on stage per performance where possible. We settled on a final cast of twenty-six, with twenty of those cast playing

146 ensemble roles. Some ensemble members would voice one or two significant characters in one or two episodes, while others would appear in up to six episodes playing a variety of parts. This casting process took around eight hours in total. I then contacted the successful auditionees and offered them their parts, which they all accepted.

A first read-through with the entire cast was held at the end of May 2018, during which time I finalised the production and crew roles. As the production was due to be staged in the Nexus Theatre on the campus of Murdoch University, I decided to offer technical roles to theatre & drama students. @lantis was going to be a style of production not generally provided as part of their undergraduate courses, and I felt this would be a good opportunity for those interested in the behind-the-scenes areas to get additional experience. For those student crew members who had never worked in their particular discipline before, I sought out people with industry experience and arranged for them to meet with the students and provide advice and insight. Taking part in @lantis proved to be a good learning experience for the students, and I am pleased to say that the crew worked diligently and delivered a level of quality that matched my goals for the production.

The sound design team of @lantis were one of the most crucial parts of the production. We decided to create as many sound effects as we possibly could on stage with live foley artists. I had previously worked with a foley team in a radio play production of War of the Worlds and found the sounds produced to be effective in aiding my performance. I also observed excellent foley work in the stage play Laika that I wanted to incorporate into @lantis. The foley artist for Laika was Andrew David, who I contacted about working on my production in early 2018. He agreed, although it became clear in the early planning stages that the variety and the sheer number of sound effects required for @lantis would need an additional foley artist to work with him. Murdoch student Cassie Power trained under Andrew as a foley artist, and the two worked well together to bring many of the strange sounds required to life.

Some effects were not possible to be performed as foley, due to either time constraints within the show, availability of materials necessary, or if the specific effect could not be guaranteed to be reproduced every time. I sourced these effects through a variety of sound archives, or through sounds that were recorded and edited by Andrew and myself. Our AV operator for the show would then play the sound file through the 147 theatre’s sound system at the direction of the Stage Manager during the performances. The microphones and recording equipment were managed and operated by our sound engineer Bradley Clarke (another Murdoch student), with assistance from a Live sound assistant (Evie MacPherson) who monitored the levels in the theatre during the performances. Finally, the bombastic theme tune was an original composition from Perth-based composer Robert Woods, who I worked with closely for a month getting a theme tune that was the right balance between being a rousing call-to-adventure while also evoking iconic science fiction themes of the past (Doctor Who, Space: 1999, Stingray (1964), Star Wars, etc).

With the entire cast of an episode being on stage for the duration of the performance, plus the space required for two foley artists to operate a foley station, as well as seven on-stage microphones, the set for @lantis, was designed to be as practical as possible. Given this was a radio play, there was no need for the actors to have set pieces or props. Lighting design became doubly important, as it would have to help convey the sense of the location the scene was taking place within without any decorative elements to illuminate. Our Lighting Designer Zenna Newman-Santos worked with Sarah Courtis and myself to create different lighting states that would help the theatrical audience with observing the change of scene locations and emotional tones and mood. Newman-Santos was working on her first lighting design and proved to be more than adept at the task. I must confess that lighting within the theatre is not one of my strong suits, so her capabilities made my job as the director that much easier.

I was conscious of the stage performance potentially looking a bit stale with actors having limited physical options due to the use of microphones. Therefore, I worked with the @lantis set designer John King to create a visually stimulating set that would not detract from the audio experience. Our solution was to mount a large projector screen in the upstage area to act as a backdrop to the performance space. It allowed us to perform several visual effects to enhance live performances. The effects included science fiction style title sequence (designed by Ellin Sears) akin to that of Doctor Who and Red Dwarf. We also had original artwork that local artists, whose work I have previously enjoyed (Ally Snell, Allison Bell, and Lorraine ‘Loz’ De Cruz), generated for the shows. This artwork helped the theatrical audiences build the world of @lantis by showing them interpretations of the underwater city, the original science fiction

148 creatures, and other story elements. The final visual component we added was having the actors portraying the protagonists in full costumes during the performances. The costumes were to assist the theatrical audience with getting a more focussed mental image of the world I wanted them to experience. I worked closely with the costume designer Roisin Keiley to generate different looks for the protagonists, helping them stand out against the stage picture we were creating and differentiating them from one another. The ensemble crew members and the on-stage foley artists wore stage blacks to showcase a professional uniformity.

The rehearsal process ran from May 2018 until September 2018 with twice-weekly rehearsals. These rehearsals were to give me and the cast the time needed to work out factors of performance such as working with the microphones, the blocking of physical movements, and working with the foley artists. The actors did not need to learn their lines off by heart like a traditional play as they would be reading the scripts during the performances. I did encourage them to learn their lines as much as they possibly could, as that would help them develop a more natural-sounding delivery of their lines. The rehearsals were also essential for our six leads to develop character traits and hone their interactions with one another. Once the production began on August the 21st 2018, rehearsals still occurred, but they were once a week, focussing specifically on the following week’s episode.

Showtime: Living in @lantis for seven weeks of performances

@lantis ran from August to October 2018, with two performances each week of a different episode. The opening night went well, with only minor audio issues where the volume levels for the dialogue microphones were too quiet in the action sequences. The sound crew quickly rectified the microphone problem, and future performances of @lantis were not affected by this issue. Indeed, there was only one occasion in the fourteen performances where we encountered any sound problems. Midway through the first performance of Episode Six Good Night, and Good Lug, the soundboard that the microphones were running through suffered from a technical glitch and blew out the speakers, resulting in the microphones no longer transmitting any audio. Fortunately, our sound technician Bradley Clarke was able to rectify the issue by powering down the

149 soundboard and re-starting it, clearing out whatever issue had caused the glitch. The microphones and speakers began functioning once more, and there were no problems for the rest of the show. The actors, to their credit, were not thrown by this technology failure and continued performing as per normal. In total, the microphones did not capture around thirty seconds of the performance. Given that the total running time of the fourteen performances amassed a running time of greater than seventeen hours, I was highly satisfied with how the audio technology worked throughout the run.

As the director, I found the performances themselves to be a very uninvolved experience in comparison to the rehearsal process. I had hired a cast and crew that adhered to a professional ethos that meant they did not require constant attention or mollycoddling. On performance nights, the Stage Manager Sarah Courtis oversaw the venue and everyone operating within it, myself included. I mostly assisted with setting up the Front of House area, leading the cast through the pre-show vocal warmups, and checking in on the wellbeing of the cast and crew. Once the house was live, I became a spectator. I found the experience of watching the performances both exhilarating and worrisome. It was a joy to see the performances being well received by the audience and to hear the reactions to my writing being overwhelmingly positive. Still, I was also on edge throughout with worries about factors beyond the control of anyone involved, such as the previously mentioned soundboard issue. However, the production team proved themselves to be marvellously adept with any problems that arose. As the weeks passed by, I was nervously pacing less and less at the back of the auditorium.

My main duties occurred away from the performances, primarily during the weekly rehearsals on Sunday afternoons where the cast and crew would run a lighting plot and two dress-and-tech rehearsals of the upcoming episode. Every aspect of the performance had to be tested and run through before the performances on the following Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Again, I have nothing but admiration and gratitude for the cast and crew in this regard. Their behaviour was exemplary, which is sadly not a given at this level of production as I have learnt from previous experiences as both an actor and crew member of other post-graduate research productions. The @lantis team generated and maintained an excellent teamwork orientated ethic, and even as the performance period entered its second month, morale and spirits remained high. Given many local productions of a similar budget and scale tend only to have a

150 performance run of 3-6 shows over 1-2 weeks, @lantis was a more demanding schedule for the predominantly semi-professional actors and technicians involved than is standard. Conscious of this, I attempted to maintain open communication with the team regarding issues of physical and mental fatigue, illness, and any other issues they might encounter, as well as creating a relaxed environment around the rehearsal space. This communication seemed to work, with no significant issues arising during the performance run.

The other area I oversaw between performances was the editing of the captured audio into the online audio productions. Overseeing the editing was a time-consuming process that involved me listening back to both of the week’s performances and compiling the best version. I made my decisions for which scenes to use based upon audio quality and actor performance to edit together what I considered to be the best possible version of the show for the online audience. I endeavoured to keep whole scenes intact as much as possible, only adding in replacement lines from the other performance when necessary due to audio capture issues or poor delivery/mistakes from the performers, to best preserve the experience of the theatrical version. I also had to add in the non-foley audio effects and music that played during the performances as the microphones did not capture them. The adding of sound effects then required all the audio to be mixed so that audio levels were not too disparate from each other. The afore-mentioned sound technician Bradley Clarke, an invaluable aid throughout the process, aided me in this practice for the audio versions of the first two episodes.

Conclusion

The two-year process of creating and staging @lantis was a tremendously involved undertaking that I am satisfied with, upon reflection. I was pleased with how the overall final production ended up looking and sounding, and with the reception that we received from audiences about the quality of the show, more of which I examine in the following chapter. Given the lack of science fiction texts in theatre in general, this was the first science fiction production in which many of the performers and crew members had partaken. They engaged with the content of the scripts and enjoyed the process of bringing science fiction to life on stage. To a person, every member of cast

151 and crew were talented and diligent workers, but above all else they were excellent, kind people who made every day of the production process a joy to oversee. I discuss my reflections on @lantis further in Chapter Seven – Discussions and Findings.

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Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data

This chapter provides the findings of the survey conducted as part of the ‘@lantis’ performances with audience members. These findings are displayed in a series of tables detailing the breakdown of responses. The chapter concludes with a summary of what my findings from the survey were and how they relate to the central research questions.

Introduction

Staging @lantis offered me the opportunity to gain first-hand experience in the creation and implementation of an original science fiction stage work. What it also offered me was an opportunity to see how contemporary theatre audiences reacted to science fiction on stage, to take a cultural temperature reading and see what people thought of this cross section of theatre and science fiction. In order to ascertain how our audiences responded to the creative artefact @lantis, I conducted a voluntary audience survey after each performance. The survey consisted of eleven questions, which asked responders to provide answers to the following:

1.) Age (select one) – 17 or Under/18-21/22-25/26-29/30-39/40-49/50-59/60- 69/70+ 2.) Gender (select one) – Male/Female/Other or Prefer not to say. 3.) Would you consider yourself a regular consumer of science fiction? Yes/No 4.) What was the name of the episode of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play you attended? 5.) Which entertainment mediums do you utilise to engage with Science Fiction texts? (E.G: Film, Television, Literature, Video Games, Podcasts, etc) 6.) Approximately how many live theatre performances would you say you attend per annum? 1-2/3-6/7+ 7.) What was it about @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play that most informed your decision to come and watch it? 8.) Did @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play meet with any pre-existing expectations you had? 9.) What did you enjoy or find interesting about this episode of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play? Please mention any specific moments you can remember, or that stood out for you.

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10.) Do you feel as though your experience of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play was enhanced by attending a live performance? Please explain why in your answer. 11.) Do you feel as though your experience of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play could have been improved in any way? Please explain why in your answer.

These surveys, which kept the identities of individual participants anonymous, allowed me to gauge general responses to the work presented during the performance season of @lantis between August and October 2018. Each survey has been given an identifying code, which is included in a reference bracket next to any direct quotations. (Eg: Survey A11 is titled so as it was the eleventh survey submitted from Episode One – Fish Out of Water. Episode Two submissions were coded with the letter ‘B’, Episode Three with ‘C’, and so on). From these surveys, I have been able to provide a breakdown of audience demographic information, their theatrical and science fiction engagement levels, and their reactions to the content of the creative artefact. I have compiled the data gathered from the 129 total participants of the survey and present my findings below. This data will be incorporated into my answers to the central research questions about the benefits science fiction and theatre offer one another, and what is unique about the practice of staging science fiction as live performance as compared to presenting science fiction texts in other entertainment mediums with a reduced capacity for ‘liveness’, in the concluding chapters of this exegesis.

Demographics of Identity

The general demographic information I sought from the @lantis audience were their ages and their gender identity. The breakdown of the age of the surveyed audience members is as follows:

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Audience Age Ep7 EP6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % (years) 17> 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0.78 18-21 5 2 4 6 3 6 7 33 25.59 22-25 4 2 4 2 2 2 5 21 16.28 26-29 3 2 2 1 0 0 1 9 6.98 30-39 3 0 6 2 1 5 7 24 18.6 40-49 0 1 2 0 0 1 3 7 5.43 50-59 4 3 2 2 3 1 8 23 17.83 60-69 0 0 1 1 3 1 4 10 7.75 70+ 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0.78 Table 1 - @lantis audience age breakdown.

Given the venue of the @lantis performances was the Nexus Theatre on Murdoch University’s South Street campus and that this would likely attract a large number of enrolled undergraduate students, it is unsurprising that the largest age demographic of survey responders was those audience members aged between 18 and 21 years old. Just over a quarter (25.59%) fell into this category, with a further 16.28% being just a couple of years older than them in the 22-25 years old category. I made the decision to break up the 18-29 age range into three sections due to my anticipation of a high number of our overall audience being in this demographic. I was curious to see if there was a difference in attendance between those who were in the average age range of undergraduate students (18-21 year olds) and those who were not. Given the drop off in the 26-29-year-old category (who were only 7% of overall audience members compared with the 25.6% of total audience aged 18-21), it would appear that the location of the Nexus Theatre on a university campus was a factor in the audience members @lantis attracted.

The third largest attending demographic were those aged between 50 and 59 years, with 17.83% of the total @lantis attendance. This is perhaps a surprising figure at first glance, given the high proportion of attendees under the age of 30, as well as the comparatively low numbers of attendees in the demographics either side of the 50-59 year olds (40-49 year olds made up 5.43% of total attendance members surveyed, 60- 69 year olds provided 7.75%). However, I believe this higher proportion of attendance could be due to social connections. As a great number of our cast and crew were aged between 18 and 29, any parental figures who would attend to support them would most likely be aged between 50 and 59 years old. There is also the possible factor that theatrical audiences tend to skew older as a general rule in Australia. However, this is 155 not necessarily reflected in my data, with only 8.5% of survey responders identifying as being aged 60+. As such, I am inclined to believe that the higher proportion of 50-59 year olds attending the production is due to a familial or social connection.

The gender identities of the @lantis audience who completed the surveys were as follows:

Gender Ep7 EP6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % Female 12 5 9 9 7 9 18 69 53.49 Male 6 5 12 5 5 7 18 58 44.96 Other 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1.55 Table 2 - @lantis gender identity breakdown.

The higher percentage of female identifying attendees (53.5% vs 45% male and 1.5% other) matches the general trend of higher percentages of female theatre attendees in the Western world64. But the differential gap between female and male identifying survey responders was only 8.5%. The reasons for this could be manifold. It is possible that the science fiction nature of the productions attracted a higher proportion of male attendance. Science fiction has been previously viewed as a male-dominant genre, with a high proportion of science fiction commercial properties (particularly in film, television, and interactive entertainment) featuring a majority of male protagonists/leads, and usually showcasing their narratives through a male dominant gaze.

For further context, I have compiled the following table that showcases the cross section between the age and gender identities of the survey responders:

Male Female Other Ages 129 (100%) 0 1 0 70+ 1 (0.8%) 5 5 0 60-69 10 (7.7%) 7 15 1 50-59 23 (17.8%) 5 2 0 40-49 7 (5.4%) 7 17 0 30-39 24 (18.6%) 4 4 1 26-29 9 (7%) 11 10 0 22-25 21 (16.3%) 19 14 0 18-21 33 (25.6%) 0 1 0 17> 1 (0.8%) 58 (45%) 69 (53.5%) 2 (1.5%) Table 3 - @lantis gender identity & age demographic comparison.

64 “Women buy 70% of theatre tickets sold and make up 60%-70% of its audience.” (Theater’s Audiences Are Mostly Female: Why Not the Roles?, 2012.) 156

The starkest differences between male and female attendees are in the 30-39 and 50-59 age categories, where female audience members are more than double the number of their male counterparts. This could be indicative of a higher participation rate in the theatre by older females, or conversely a significant drop off in male participation after the age of 29. The male attendance rate equals or betters the female attendance rate in the categories between the ages of 18-29. It could be that the science fiction nature of @lantis is more appealing to younger male audience members, which would explain why their numbers are stronger in the younger demographics. The drop-off in older male survey responders could also be due to already having access to science fiction texts in formats they are familiar with (film, literature, etc). If the theatre is a venue that has not previously provided science fiction texts of interest, and has a hard time retaining older male audiences, it is less likely that older male science fiction fans would look for works to consume in that space. They may believe that particular larder to be empty.

The Audience’s Interactions with the Theatre and the Science Fiction Genre

An area of interest to me is the audience’s relationship between the science fiction genre and attending the theatre. Survey responders were asked to indicate if they considered themselves to be a regular consumer of science fiction texts, as well as their annual number of visits to the theatre (their options being 1-2 visits, 3-6 visits, or 7+ visits). The results of the total responses from the live theatre audience are indicated below:

No. of Annual Regular SF Regular SF Total Theatre visits Consumer - Consumer - Yes No 7+ 54 (41.9%) 14 (10.9%) 68 (79.4% Yes) 3-6 23 (17.8%) 23 (17.8%) 46 (50% Yes) 1-2 10 (7.7%) 5 (3.9%) 15 (66.7% Yes) Total 87 (67.4%) 42 (32.6%) 129 (100%) Table 4 - Regular consumption of science fiction & Annual number of Theatre visits.

What is of interest here is the high proportion of people who visit the theatre 7+ times per year who identify as science fiction consumers – 79.4%. This is the largest amount percentagewise of regular science fiction consumption between the three options for

157 number of annual theatre visits. Those who attend 3-6 theatrical performances a year were evenly split between identifying as science fiction fans or not, while two-thirds of those who only attend 1-2 theatre shows said they regularly consumed science fiction works. The overall numbers more accurately reflect this third demographic, with 67.4% of all audience members surveyed stating they regularly interact with science fiction texts. What this data indicates is that theatre audiences may possess a higher level of engagement with science fiction texts than I first suspected. The fact that those who attend the most theatre shows per year also identified largely as regular consumers of science fiction indicates that there is an audience regularly interacting with the entertainment medium of theatre who have knowledge of science fiction texts. This is encouraging, it shows that there is a place in the theatre for science fiction stories. If you stage a science fiction production, there is an audience out there who would like to see it.

Survey responders were also asked “Which entertainment mediums do you utilise to engage with science fiction texts?” to ascertain where they regularly interact with the science fiction genre. The full table of responses is as follows:

Entertainment Mediums Ep7 EP Ep Ep Ep Ep Ep Tota % 6 5 4 3 2 1 l Television 18 10 18 11 11 14 30 112 86.82 Film/Cinema 17 10 18 10 10 14 31 110 85.27 Video Games 13 7 15 7 4 9 14 69 53.49 Literature 13 5 9 8 7 8 18 68 52.71 Podcasts 3 2 3 3 1 6 8 26 20.15 Comics 0 0 1 1 1 0 4 7 5.43 Role Playing 0 1 1 0 0 2 2 6 4.65 Audiobooks 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 3.1 Boardgames 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 4 3.1 Online formats (Forums, 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 2.33 YouTube) Theatre 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 1.55 Enigma machine coding 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.78 Table 5 - Entertainment mediums used to engage with science fiction texts.

Unsurprisingly, the screen media of television and film/cinema are the overwhelming leaders in the field, with 86.8% and 85.3% respectively of total responders engaging with science fiction through those mediums. Video games were the third highest method cited, just ahead of literature. These four mediums all had over 50% participation rates with surveyed audience members, which reflected my expectations prior to compiling 158 the data. Video games being ahead of literature is the only unexpected result, although it is possible that this should have been anticipated due to the creative artefact’s younger-than-average theatre audience. 49.6% of the surveyed audience were under the age of thirty and, given the higher participation rates of young adults with the video game medium, this may be more reflective of a future trend towards twenty-first century audiences seeking science fiction texts in interactive media instead of through more traditional forms like literature.

Behind those four dominant mediums, Podcasts being cited by one-fifth of total responders as a method through which they regularly interact with science fiction was surprising. Like video games, this response rate of 20.1% could be more reflective of the average age of the attending audience, although it is encouraging that this audio-based entertainment format appears to be doing well. If the @lantis audio episodes were to be released as a podcast series, it could find a willing audience in the Podcasting community. Other digital mediums such as Audiobooks (3.1%) and online formats like forum websites and YouTube (2.3%) did not fare as well, although they did better than the medium @lantis was being presented in: theatre. Only two of the 129 total audience members surveyed cited theatre as a medium in which they interacted with science fiction texts. This is a significant figure, particularly when contrasted with cinema. Both are mediums that require audiences to gather in public theatres to observe the performative text upon their initial releases65, and yet there is a massive discrepancy between the participation rates of the two.

Why attendees came to see @lantis

The second half of the survey asked questions directly related to their experience with @lantis. The first of these questions asked: “What was it about @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play that most informed your decision to come and watch it?” Responses were varied, with individual audience members sometimes giving multiple reasons for

65 It is worth acknowledging that some participants may only view science fiction films in a home environment by watching DVDs/digital streams. The act of going to the cinema itself may not be a part of the experience for all who gave the answer of ‘films’. 159 their attendance. I have compiled the answers into the categories of reasons given in the table below:

Attendance reasons Ep EP Ep Ep Ep Ep Ep Tota % 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 l Social connection to 10 5 12 6 5 7 18 63 48.84 cast/crew Curiosity 4 1 2 2 1 4 14 28 21.71 Seeing Previous episodes 4 2 4 5 3 1 0 19 14.73 Interest in @lantis concept 5 1 1 1 0 2 8 18 13.95 Science fiction Fan 3 0 1 0 0 3 9 16 12.4 Member of local theatre 4 2 2 0 3 1 3 15 11.63 community Word of Mouth 0 2 4 1 2 1 2 12 9.3 Seeking the Theatrical 0 1 1 0 2 1 5 10 7.75 experience Radio Play aspect 3 0 0 0 1 2 3 9 6.98 Season Pass 2 1 0 0 2 3 0 8 6.2 Advertisements 0 0 1 1 1 0 4 7 5.43 Previous work (Thaw) 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 4 3.1 Reviews 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 1.55 Table 6 - Reasons for attending a performance of @lantis.

As this was a University-level production with a mixture of professional and semi- professional actors, crew members, and support staff, it is not surprising that the most commonly cited reason for attendance was that the survey responder had a social or familial connection to a member of the cast and/or crew of @lantis. The second most commonly given response was one of curiosity, people who thought that the idea of a science fiction comedy radio play was worth investigating. As one attendee to the first episode Fish Out of Water wrote: “I loved the premise, the genre combination. I was also intrigued to see a live radio play.” (Survey A31) The curiosity responses dropped off significantly after episode one, as responders for episodes two through seven had, by and large, already seen a previous episode. It is likely that some of those responders who cited curiosity in their episode one feedback went on to attribute ‘Seeing a Previous Episode’ in future feedback.

The ‘Previous Episode’ response was the third most commonly given reason for attending the show, with almost 15% of all people surveyed saying their earlier exposure to @lantis had convinced them to come see more. “I saw the previous ones and I've been hooked!” (Survey D2). It was also of interest that 3% of attendees stated that their decision to attend was informed by having seen previous theatrical work I have directed, 160 namely Thaw (2015) – a science fiction drama set in a cryonics facility. Thaw was positively reviewed when it was staged and had a strong audience turn out, but it was still a pleasant surprise to see that production cited by attendees as a reason for seeing @lantis.

Despite two-thirds of survey respondents indicating that they regularly consumed science fiction, only 12% gave their status as a science fiction fan as a reason for attending @lantis: “Like to give new science fiction things a chance.” (Survey A4) “Love science fiction, the combination of comedy & science fiction allows so much potential to explore moral & ethical situations.” (Survey G6) A conclusion which can be drawn from this is that there is a discrepancy between regularly consuming science fiction and being a science fiction fan. It can be a little difficult to avoid science fiction texts in some mediums, particularly cinema. It is possible that audiences might acknowledge they consume science fiction regularly through television programs, cinema, and other mediums but do not consider themselves ‘fans’.

From a publicization/advertising perspective, it is interesting to me that ‘Word of Mouth’ was more commonly cited (9.3%) as a reason for attending @lantis than any of the publicity material. Advertisements, which mostly consisted of online advertising through social media platforms and various online science fiction communities based in Western Australia, were cited by 5.43% of survey responders. Reviews, which have a tradition of great influence on the medium of theatre, were only cited on two occasions as having influenced or informed audience members to attend. The reviews for @lantis were all largely positive (see Appendices: Reviews of @lantis for more detail), so it is unlikely that they would have repelled anyone considering attending. It is perhaps a particular quirk of this level of theatrical performance that positive reviews are not enough to see the masses flock to the theatre. Audience numbers for University-level, semi-professional productions are largely more dependent on social connections and positive reviews from trusted personal sources that have seen the show or know the key creatives than they are on published reviews. It could also be that only certain types of publications, such as state-wide or national news outlets, have the reputation and trust of the public to inform their entertainment choices.

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Audience Expectations

Audience members were asked after each episode of @lantis whether it had met with the expectations they had prior to attending. The responses are laid out in the table below:

Did @lantis meet Ep7 EP6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % expectations? Exceeded expectations 8 2 3 4 3 3 12 35 27.13 Yes 8 5 11 6 5 7 18 60 46.51 No expectations 1 0 5 3 2 3 6 20 15.5 No 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 2.33 Other 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 1.55 N/A 1 0 2 1 2 3 0 9 6.98 Table 7 - ‘Did @lantis meet your expectations?’

The overwhelming trend from the data is that @lantis met with or exceeded the expectations of the survey responders, with almost three-quarters of responses falling within these categories. Feedback was highly positive across the series, including comments such as: “It just keeps defying my expectations. Somehow it just gets better and better” (Survey G6), “I came in thinking it was nerd comedy, but it was more than that” (Survey E13) and “It exceeded them. Wasn't expecting it to be so "performed" (was expecting more static.)” (Survey A36) 15.5% of responders said that they had no expectations of the performance, and just three out of the 129 responses said that the show did not meet expectations. The two responses classified as ‘Other’ consisted of plot-specific expectations held by the individual audience members and did not discuss if these expectations had been met. Nine surveys gave no response to this question.

It is interesting to note that the three surveys that said the creative artefact had not met with their expectations were all for the final two episodes – Good Night, and Good Lug and It’s a Wonderful Mind. Although these responders did not indicate if they had seen previous episodes, it is entirely possible that they had attended previous episodes and had preferences to the content or style of a previous episode. None of the three elaborated further on how these episodes had not met their expectations and the rest of their feedback in other questions was positive, with only minor criticisms about the staging of the foley artists (Survey F8), and the pacing of dialogue in the script (Survey G10).

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What did they enjoy?

Question Nine in the @lantis audience survey asked: “What did you enjoy or find interesting about this episode of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play? Please mention any specific moments you can remember, or that stood out for you.” The responses were varied and open-ended, so I have collated them into different production areas:

What did you enjoy? Ep7 Ep6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % Script/Writing 10 3 4 7 5 6 11 46 35.66 Performances 1 4 10 3 2 2 15 37 28.68 Foley/Sound effects 0 0 3 4 1 6 15 29 22.48 Characters 4 4 2 3 1 3 10 27 20.93 Intertextual references 6 4 5 3 5 1 0 24 18.6 Humour/Jokes 1 3 3 3 2 4 6 22 17.05 Original science fiction 2 1 4 0 1 2 3 13 10.08 content Artwork 0 1 1 3 0 2 5 12 9.3 Real Science used in 1 0 1 1 4 2 2 11 8.53 narrative Science fiction Tropes & 2 0 0 1 5 2 1 11 8.53 Themes Lighting 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 4 3.1 Costumes 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0.78 Table 8 - Enjoyment of @lantis.

The quality and content of the scripts for the series was the most commonly cited area of enjoyment for survey responders. Responses from the surveys regarding the writing were mostly positive; “The script was fantastic! I loved the scene behind the infomersials, and how a science that was created for such a good purpose could be so utterly corrupted” (Survey G6), “The way it is written in that it slowly reveals aspects to the audience gets you thinking and keeps you engaged” (Survey E5), “Great use of science fiction themes, to draw attention to current issues. […] Loved the scientific concept around flexibility around morality of clone research.” (Survey A31), and “Well developed world building in the script and well written characters. If I found it as a podcast, I would listen to other episodes.” (Survey A36) In total, just over a third of all survey responses cited the quality of the writing. This showcases that even in genres that theatrical audiences are not familiar with or frequently exposed to on stage, they will latch onto and appreciate texts that demonstrate a high quality of writing, world- building, and character building.

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The performances of the cast of @lantis were the next most cited reason for audience enjoyment. While the high number of survey responders with social connections to cast members may have had an effect on this outcome, feedback on performance matched how I felt about the performance levels of the cast; that is to say, they were very good. Most of the feedback was about the ensemble, with only a couple of surveys specifically naming individual actors for performative praise. The characters they portrayed were cited by 21% of surveys as a source of enjoyment, with the character of Lug receiving particular praise for their hilarity and character development. (Surveys A5, A6, A10, A11, B16, D8, D12, F4, F6, F10, & G19)

The third most commonly mentioned production element that audiences enjoyed was that of the live foley and sound effects, with 22% of surveys speaking positively of this aspect of the productions. “Watching live foley work is always great fun, especially when the foley artists have multiple sounds to do at once.” (Survey G7) Indeed, a commonly suggested improvement in answer to Question 11 (Suggested improvements from the Audience) was to have more foley in the production. The high ranking of foley/sound effects above other stagecraft elements (Artwork (9.3%), Lighting (3.1%), and Costumes (0.8%)) is key, as it demonstrates that theatricality can be achieved in a production that eschews more traditional visual stage elements such as lighting, costume design, hair design, make-up design, and set dressing in favour of non- visual elements. The theatre is a visual medium, but it is not solely visual.

It was interesting to observe that 18.6% of audience members cited the use of intertextual references as a source of enjoyment: “I loved the Doctor Whoishness and a xmas carol references.” (Survey G17), and “The CLINTON VS TRUMP references.” (Survey F10). In my writing of the scripts for @lantis, I did purposefully use references within the stories to evoke previous notable works of fiction; from directly quoting famous science fiction dialogue like Ripley’s infamous threat in Aliens, “Get away from her, you bitch!” in Fish Out of Water, to utilising commonly known story frameworks as scaffolding for episode plots (Mary is visited by three ‘ghosts’ a la A Christmas Carol in the Christmas- themed finale episode It’s a Wonderful Mind). While I was hoping that referencing other texts in this manner would by enjoyable for the audience, I was surprised to find this practice referred to so often as a source of audience enjoyment. I anticipated that

164 intertextual references would be cited as often as the use of real science in the narrative (8.5%) and of commonly known science fiction tropes and themes (8.5%).

Was it enhanced by watching it live?

As @lantis was being presented as a live theatrical show and as an audio drama, I felt that it was important to ask those who attended the live theatrical performances the following question: “Do you feel as though your experience of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play was enhanced by attending a live performance?” Their answers are in the table below:

Enhanced by watching live? Ep7 EP6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % Yes 19 10 18 12 10 13 33 115 89.15 Indifferent 0 0 2 1 2 3 3 11 8.53 No 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 3 2.33 Table 9 - ‘Was @lantis enhanced by watching it live in the theatre?’

This question is vital for my research. The overwhelming majority of responders stated that seeing the performances live had enhanced their experience of consuming the text, with 89% answering in the affirmative. The reasons provided were varied, including: “Absolutely. I'm extremely visual – I find it hard to imagine (I prefer film to book) the reality. The effects used, particularly the slides and costumes, aid my experience” (Survey E2), “The facial expressions of some of the characters brought an amazing character aspect to the performance. You could really see the personality with each character” (Survey C6), and “Yes! Watching the cast use their bodies to assist their voice intonations and projections. So much passion and focus on voice to create visual images and emotional responses from the audience – superb.” (Survey B4) 8.5% of total responders stated that they were indifferent or could not ascertain if watching the productions live in the theatre enhanced their viewing experience.

Only three of the 129 surveyed audience members felt that their experience of the text had not been enhanced by attending the live performance. Each gave a different reason, which are as follows: “I feel though it sometimes hinder my enjoyment, just because I can see people doubling up on the mics and that's what slows down the dialogue” (Survey D13), “Thinking the radio version may be the superior version” (Survey E4), and “I loved the idea of going to a live performance as I'm a fan of theatre. I found

165 the theatre too big and too busy – but maybe it's just me!!!” (Survey E21) These responses all discuss different factors of the creative artefact, so the lack of uniformity in the very few ‘No Enhancement’ answers received lead me to believe that these issues are particular to the individual survey responders. Responder E21 even says as much at the end of their answer.

Suggested improvements from the Audience

The final question asked in the survey was “Do you feel as though your experience of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play could have been improved in any way? Please explain why in your answer.” The answers provided have been collated in the following table:

Any improvements? Ep7 EP6 Ep5 Ep4 Ep3 Ep2 Ep1 Total % None 10 8 7 12 8 9 18 72 55.81 Sound/Foley 3 1 5 1 3 2 12 27 20.93 Performance/Mic 3 0 3 1 3 3 4 17 13.18 technique Script/Writing 5 0 4 1 0 2 3 15 11.63 Staging 0 1 3 0 0 0 2 6 4.65 Visuals/Artwork 1 0 2 0 0 0 1 4 3.1 More Funding 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 1.55 Table 10 - Suggested improvements.

56% of those surveyed said they had no improvements they wished to suggest. Many of these responses stated that they could not think of any way to improve the production as they felt it was of such a high quality: “No, it was amazing! I can't imagine how it could be better!” (Survey G6) This is obviously the desired outcome from the viewpoint of the show’s creator, but it does not necessarily assist in helping learn from practice.

44% of responses did have improvements to suggest and they were fairly varied. Of course, individual tastes and opinions do flavour these suggestions, and without a working knowledge of our pre-production work, some of the suggestions made had already been addressed. For example, one audience member suggested “Having an audio engineer to live mix the mics as some sections of the dialogue were lost” (Survey A8) when we already had a dedicated sound engineer (Bradley Clarke) and audio monitor (Evie MacPherson) working to ensure sound output and presentation was as

166 efficient as possible. It did make us, as a production unit, more conscious of what we needed to improve on from show to show.

The most often suggested area for improvement was the Sound and Foley, with 21% of total suggestions addressing this. I think it is important to note that 44% of the total audio-related improvement suggestions were made in the feedback for Episode One – Fish Out of Water: “Some volume of the main characters vs sound effects made some dialogue hard to hear” (A23) “A couple of parts were slightly hard to hear properly but not in a major way” (A25) and “The mic the 2nd from stage left is a bit quiet (front of stage.)” (A26 & A27) As this was our first full performance for an audience and with a new audio set-up we had designed, it is not surprising that we had a couple of minor issues in sound presentation at the start of our run of shows. The high amount of sound- based improvements suggested is indicative of this, as is the drop off in concerns about sound and foley as the series progressed, as we had figured out workarounds and solutions to audio issues.

The other commonly suggested improvement regarding sound was a desire to see more implementation of live foley sound effects. This was suggested largely due to the enjoyment audience members derived from seeing the sound effects made live on stage by the foley team. “Foley made for a rich imaginative universe – very visual/vivid in my mind.” (Survey E14) Some audience members felt that a greater importance needed to be placed on the foley artists (Andrew David and Cassie Power) and their on stage work: “The foley people should be more in front on stage as that's what's interesting about radio plays” (Survey F8) While having the foley desk and artists at the front and centre for performances was not a practical staging suggestion (the foley artists needed to be able to enter and exit the stage quickly and with ease to add or remove certain items they were utilising), it is interesting to note that they were viewed by some attendees as being just as important – if not more so – than the cast members performing the dialogue.

The performances (13%) and the scripts/writing (12%) were the next most commonly cited areas where improvements could be made. In particular, there were a couple of suggestions that the actors needed to improve their performance skills when interacting with their microphones: “Actors having a more consistent microphone technique to even out some of the dynamics.” (Survey B6) While a justifiable concern, 167 very few of the professional or semi-professional actors who performed in @lantis had ever had any experience with performing in a radio play production. As director, I did my utmost to ensure they would be as comfortable with performing on mic as possible, but I was also aware that this was a skill that would develop as the season of @lantis progressed. The number of comments regarding actor microphone technique diminished over the seven-week run as the cast got more comfortable with using the equipment.

My conclusions

From an analysis of the data gathered through the audience surveys conducted during the performances of @lantis, I have made the following findings:

1. There is an audience for science fiction works in the theatre. The data gathered shows that there is a large crossover between theatre attendance and regular interaction with science fiction texts. Two-thirds (67.4%) of those surveyed considered themselves to be regular consumers of science fiction, with almost 80% of those who attended the theatre 7+ times per annum being regular consumers of science fiction texts. The genre of science fiction is flourishing in other entertainment mediums, particularly on screen-based media. If there were more science fiction works being performed in theatres at all levels, from community-based amateur dramatic societies up to multi-million-dollar productions on the West End & Broadway, there is an audience for them. 2. Science fiction can attract a greater diversity of audiences into theatrical spaces. @lantis attracted a higher percentage of audience members who were male (45%) than the average demographics for live theatre in the rest of the Western world. (34%)66 Likewise, the average age of the @lantis audience was 34.9 years old, considerably younger than the average Western world theatre attendee age of 52.67 The higher rates of engagement from these two demographics showcase the potential attraction for audiences towards theatrical spaces staging science fiction productions.

66 Figure taken from The New York Times article ‘Not Just for Grown-Ups: The Broadway Audience Is Getting Younger.’ 67 Figure taken from the Audience Agency’s Theatre 2016 study. 168

3. The theatrical elements of science fiction stage productions are an attraction to the audience. Despite the high level of the @lantis audiences’ engagement with the science fiction genre, only 12% of attendees identified their status as a science fiction fan as a reason for attending @lantis. 89% of survey responders stated that seeing the performance(s) live had enhanced their experience with @lantis, with audiences predominantly enjoying the live performances of the cast (29%), and the creation and implementation of foley sound effects (22%). 4. Audiences do not utilise the theatre as a medium to consume science fiction texts. Only two of the 129 total audience members surveyed cited theatre as a medium in which they consumed science fiction. Television (86.8%) and film/cinema (85.3%) are the main mediums through which audiences interact with science fiction texts. Video games (53.5%) were third, just ahead of literature (52.8). One-fifth of those surveyed consume science fiction through podcasts.

In the next chapter I use the survey results as part of my discussion of my findings from creating and staging @lantis, as well as reflecting on the final performances, and discuss how the relationship between the science fiction genre and the medium of theatre can benefit each other.

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Chapter Seven – Discussions and Findings

This chapter provides discussions on the findings from the research for this thesis. I begin with my reflections on ‘@lantis’ post-production, before addressing what the production and associated findings contribute to academic knowledge. The chapter concludes by addressing each of the central research questions and what answers and findings are provided by the exegesis.

Introduction

In this chapter, I critically reflect upon my findings from the creative component of my research; the production of @lantis. My analysis includes examinations of narrative and performative elements of the @lantis scripts. I also analyse the survey results provided by the @lantis audiences and discuss the aspects of theatre and live performance deemed to improve the science fiction story. I examine how the theatre and science fiction benefit one another, which includes exploring emergent practices and technologies for more effectively staging science fiction. Through this analysis and self-reflection, I provide answers to the central questions of this exegesis: What are the benefits of performing science fiction as a live performance? What can the theatre do for science fiction texts that other mediums cannot? Why is science fiction good for the medium of theatre?

Reflections on @lantis post-completion

When @lantis concluded its run of performances on October the 4th 2018, my immediate reflections were that the production showcased that episodic science fiction texts could be staged in a theatrical space effectively. In the following weeks, I engaged with Robin Nelson’s ‘Modes of Knowing’ model and reflected on how my experience writing and directing @lantis fit within its parameters, which was discussed in Chapter Three – Methodologies. I engaged in much more active critical reflection than I did when Thaw ended. @lantis was a massively rewarding experience for me and thankfully for many of the cast and crew as well. In an informal discussion with one of the lead actors towards the end of the performance run, she expressed their gratitude for the unique nature of the show, saying how rare it was to get to play and develop a character over multiple shows on a week-to-week basis. I certainly enjoyed seeing how the actors grew

171 into their roles over the rehearsal and production periods. I gave them a great deal of creative freedom over developing characteristics (vocal and physical) for their roles, workshopping the ideas that they generated about their characters with them as we went. I believe that this led to characters who were more developed and better realised than if I had just told them how to do every aspect of their performance. I believe this collaborative method of character development works well – given that you have access to competent performers – and I anticipate it is a method I will employ in any future works that I might direct.

@lantis was very well received critically, with the season of shows collecting three awards at the Nexus Theatre Gala Night in 2018 (Best original script for Episode Five: The Year of the Long Tail, Best supporting actor for Nic Doig in the role of Lug, and Best PR and Marketing for Melissa ‘Maiken’ Kruger and Ellin Sears). Audiences, as seen in the survey results in Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data, were overwhelmingly positive with their feedback for the production. They were excited by getting to see serialised theatre on a week-to-week basis. While that was a lovely aspect of the show, I am not sure that staging seven individual shows over seven weeks back-to-back is a viable option for most production companies, professional or otherwise, for two reasons. Firstly, we were fortunate to have a venue that could accommodate a seven- week booking that was not an exorbitant expense, a dedicated cast and crew for the period, and no major illness or injuries to prevent anyone from participating (or indeed, broader social issues, such as a pandemic, to limit our ability to put on the shows). Secondly, it is a gruelling process for all involved. The actors and cast were brilliant during performances and in their behaviour and attitude towards the production period; but they were exhausted at the end. It was an intense period that could have negatively affected the performances had additional external pressures started to impact us. I feel that episodic scripted theatre like @lantis could benefit from being staged on a monthly, rather than weekly, basis. It would give the performers more time to engage with their characters and the scripts individually, instead of having to switch focus between episodes every week. It would also give the crew more time to implement their staging practices more effectively and with less of a pressure on time. It might also be of benefit to the audience, as the demands of seeing a show each month are less of a burden on their time and finances than a weekly show.

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How the theatre benefits science fiction

I reflect upon @lantis as a positive experience; academically, artistically, and personally. Informal discussions with those who took part in its creation, attended a live performance, or listened to the audio episodes online have yielded overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding all elements of the production, with particular praise given to the narrative, the characters, and the production values. The final night of @lantis saw the second performance of Episode Seven: It’s a Wonderful Mind. With sixty-six audience members in attendance, this was our best attended performance of the run. The average audience attendance per show during the run was thirty-four, so to have almost double that figure in attendance had a positive impact on the performance. From my perspective as a director, it was the strongest performance given by the ensemble over the seven weeks. I believe that this was in part due to the atmosphere generated by the audience that evening. The positive relationship between the cast’s performance and the audience ties neatly into my first key finding regarding how the theatre benefits the science fiction genre: Science fiction stories are a discussion of new ideas, and these stories can benefit from theatre’s ‘liveness’, interactivity, and accessibility to engaged, participatory audiences.

One of the great strengths of science fiction is its ability to provoke those who engage with its texts to question. While other genres seek to evoke particular emotional responses (mystery and horror seek to elicit feelings of fear and terror, murder mysteries prompt the reader to solve who done it, romance/love stories attempt to draw out feelings of love and affection, etc), science fiction stories seek to make the reader think instead of – or as well as – feel. Science fiction is the genre of questions, the most common of which being ‘What if…?’:

Science fiction is the What If genre. All sorts of definitions have been proposed by people in the field, but they all contain both The What If and The Serious Explanation; that is, science fiction shows things not as they characteristically or habitually are but as they might be, and that for this “might be” the author must offer a rational, serious, consistent explanation, one that does not (in Samuel Delany’s phrase) offend against what is known to be known.

(Russ, 1973, p. 200)

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Entertainment thrives on our capacity to connect and engage with the content presented. Science fiction as a genre can require significant use of cognition from its audience. That is not to say there is no room for more passive participatory texts, but a greater level of engagement can reward consumers of science fiction. The number of science fiction texts that dominate the fan-driven communities of pop culture conventions, cosplay culture, and Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) reflect the intense levels of engagement and participation the genre can engender in consumers. Certain branches of theatre seek similar levels of interactivity from its audiences (such as in Pantomime or Improv Comedy), and their audiences crave that participation too. Science fiction practitioners could and should be looking to live performance formats to utilise this form of engagement.

As established in the survey results in the previous chapter, the theatrical elements of science fiction stage productions are an attraction to the audience. 89% of survey responders stated that seeing the performance(s) live had enhanced their experience, with much praise and enjoyment derived from witnessing the live performances of the cast, and the creation and implementation of foley sound effects. When we see a theatre show as an audience member, we engage with much more than the narrative; we connect with the performance environment, the sensory effects (usually visual or auditory, but not always),68 and our fellow audience members. We become a part of the ‘liveness’ itself. I sought to engage the @lantis audience in this manner by showing them the techniques for making a radio play as part of the production. The foley desk and the two foley artists had a prominent position on stage, allowing the audience to see how they created the live sound effects. Footstep sound effects were generated by holding a shoe in each hand and ‘walking’ them on top of a wooden board on the table. The noises of characters vomiting in Timeshare were created by quickly squeezing a large water-soaked sponge onto a brick in a bucket. The

68 Increasingly, productions are utilising food and drink within performances to engage audiences through the senses of smell, touch, and taste. When I attended a performance of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (2016) on Broadway in 2017, every member of the audience was given a Russian dumpling by members of the chorus to consume during the performance. Likewise, anyone who attends a performance of the comedy series Drunk Shakespeare (2013) is offered a free shot of something alcoholic to consume along with the cast at the start of the show. The improvised comedy theatre series Frankie’s (2018) – set in a bar – allows its audience members who sit at the tables of the faux establishment to go to the bar built into the set and purchase drinks from the improvisors playing bar staff at any time during the performance. 174 process of sound effect generation was deliberately presented on stage to engage viewers, to allow them to observe how one action can sound as if another entirely different action is happening.

This access to the processes around staging radio plays, an uncommon form of live performance, is of interest to the viewer precisely because of the rarity of radio plays themselves. The rarity was a key factor in my decision to make @lantis a radio play. The @lantis audience observed a less common form of live performance and witnessed the mechanics of it in action. They were engaging both with the text presented and the staging format. This engagement proved to be effective for our surveyed audience members, whose comments on the foley were mostly positive: “Seeing the foley and being part of the audience all add to the energy of the performance that you don't get through headphones.” (Survey A36) “I still believe seeing the foley and actors live gives you a greater appreciation for the craft.” (Survey B13) “Foleys made for a rich imaginative universe – very visual/vivid in my mind.” (Survey E14) What was of interest to me were those responders who wanted to see the foley elements play an even more significant role in the production. Two responses stand out in particular:

All of the backstage crew should be on stage. The foley people should be more in front on stage as that's what's interesting about radio plays.

(Survey F8)

I understand it would be difficult to do but using as little digital sound effects [as possible] would greatly improve the experience for me. I like the idea of hearing a foley sound effect that I'd have to suspend a little bit of disbelief to connect to the play and have that moment.

(Survey G7)

These suggestions were made out of a greater desire to engage with the foley aspect of the production. Responder F8 believes that the foley artists are the focal point of such shows and are “what's interesting about radio plays.” That is a valid and justifiable opinion. Other entertainment, such as cinema, utilise the work of foley artists but hide the artist themselves, as that would detract from audience immersion in the final piece. If we could see the foley artists in their recording studios creating the sound effects of Batman punching goons in Gotham on the screen next to the fight scene as it plays out, 175 that would be distracting and serves no purpose to what the film is trying to achieve; immersion in a gritty superhero world. Instead, seeing the foley artists would disrupt the illusion of reality. In a radio play, the production elements outside of the text are an accepted part of the audience’s engagement with the work. Responder G7 would have preferred fewer digital sound effects and a more significant role in the soundscape of @lantis for the foley. Unbeknownst to them, the foley artists were generating as many of the sound effects as they could do so effectively. The foley team could not depict the digital sound effects to my satisfaction as director, due either to the limitations of only having two foley operators (some scenes were audibly complex and would have required additional foley artists to generate all necessary effects) or due to the difficulty of creating a sound of requisite quality with the materials available to them.69 The desire of these survey responders for more of the sound effects to be ‘live’ re-enforces the idea that the theatre audience wants a sense of ‘liveness’. For some, ‘liveness’ is more important than the performers’ ability to produce the best possible quality effects with which to tell the story.

When looking forward and plotting potential courses for the science fiction genre to take in theatre and live performance, it is important to consider how the theatre itself can be changed. The increasing presence of technology in our lives has given us many different options for how we can engage with the world and with each other. Technological integration within the theatre is not a new phenomenon.70 Still, as we enter the 2020’s, practitioners of theatre and live performance have never had so many options for how they can present, manipulate, and alter our perceptions of what is achievable through blending the theatre with other technologies.

69 In Timeshare, the character of Alan re-enters a scene of high tension after having gone to the bathroom. His return is signalled by the sound of a toilet flushing. Our lead foley artist, Andrew David, initially planned to set up a microphone inside a backstage bathroom at the Nexus Theatre next to a toilet and flush it at the appropriate time to generate the sound effect live. As much as I was supportive of this concept, I ruled this particular foley effect to be impractical for a number of reasons (additional equipment would have to be sourced and set up, an additional foley operator would have to be hired, extra co-ordination pressures would have been put upon the Stage Manager Sarah Courtis, there was the possibility of the toilet itself not flushing properly if there was a plumbing issue, etc). As such, the toilet flushing sound effect heard by the audience was pre-recorded. 70 Advancements in electrical lighting were quickly utilised by the theatre to enhance the visual possibilities of their shows. Additionally, theatrical practices were sometimes integrated with new technologies. In the early days of cinema, film pioneers such as George Méliès used conventions of stagecraft to inform the earliest conventions of film. 176

One of the benefits I foresaw in staging @lantis as a radio play was its capacity to have a second life and audience after the theatrical production. Theatre shows usually begin and end their life in the performance and being present to witness the cast and crew working together; their “liveness” thus an attraction. However, as seen with programs such as National Theatre Live (2009) from the National Theatre in London, live performance can be captured and shared globally to significant effect. Similarly, I designed @lantis as an audio drama, with the potential to effectively broadcast it as an audio-only production in an online format. The visual elements of the stage production (lighting design, artwork, video elements, costumes, etc) added context for the theatre audience, to construct @lantis. None of these elements drove the plot or revealed aspects of the narrative. That way, the dialogue and sound effects propelled the story, allowing for the listening audience and theatre audience to share the same narratives, even if their experiences of consumption were different.

By recording and releasing an audio version of the theatrical production of @lantis online, it allowed the listening audience to engage with a theatrical performance for which they might otherwise not have had the opportunity. @lantis could conceivably have been produced as a radio play series, in a studio without an audience. Indeed, in April 2020, I had an experience of what this theatre-less version of @lantis might have been. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the practice of self-isolation by large swathes of the global population, I had an idea for a short @lantis story called ‘Self Isolation’, in which the lead characters had to keep apart from each other to combat a similar viral outbreak in their world. The original cast all reprised their roles and, being in self-isolation themselves, recorded their lines from their homes on their phones or laptops. I then edited the audio together into an eleven-minute mini-episode71 and released it online as a surprise episode for fans of the series.

While this was a thought-provoking experience, particularly in producing a piece of entertainment during a time of global crisis in unusual circumstances, I found that the lack of an audience presence and the usual theatrical rehearsal process affected the production. While @lantis: Self Isolation was not of the 2018 season standards nor an

71 Available to listen to at https://www.atlantisradioplay.com/listen-online 177 official part of the series,72 as the director I noted how strange it was for the performers to act out their lines in their homes, one-on-one with me instead of in a theatrical space alongside their fellow actors and with an audience. The “liveness” was missing, and it had a noticeable impact on their performances. That is not to say they performed poorly, just that it was different. Stylistically, I believe that the presence of the theatrical elements made @lantis a more complete and compelling production. @lantis: Self Isolation allowed me to see what those elements added to the production quality and performances, and why the theatre is just as crucial to the radio play experience as are the audio aspects.

A noteworthy aspect of the theatre’s minor role in the history and development of science fiction texts is how other entertainment mediums have co-opted theatrical language conventions for their use within the science fiction genre. Television programs such as Science Fiction Theatre (1955) and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988) use ‘theatre’ in their titles, although for different reasons. Science Fiction Theatre, broadcast between 1955 and 1957, was an anthology series similar to other speculative programs of the era, the most notable being The Twilight Zone (1959). Science Fiction Theatre uses the word ‘theatre’ in its title to evoke a sense that this program was significant, more grandiose than the other television programs on offer. This appropriation of the term ‘theatre’ by other entertainment mediums is evident in online spaces as well. An internet search for the keywords “science fiction theatre” yields results regarding Science Fiction Theatre before the practice of science fiction on the stage. The phrase “science fiction plays” does at least offer up a list of science fiction stage texts when entered into most search engines, but not on the popular video website YouTube. There, a search for “science fiction plays” provides several radio plays/audio dramas displayed ahead of theatrical plays. This appropriation of theatrical terminology might seem insignificant, but in using language associated with live performance and creating terminological confusion, other entertainment mediums make it more difficult for science fiction theatre to forge its own identity with prospective audiences and performers.

72 Not that it was ever intended to be, being more of a fun, informal get together for the cast and myself to help spread good health practices and information through a science fiction comedy narrative than a continuation of narrative events. 178

A commonly cited reason for the lack of science fiction works on the stage is a perceived inability to effectively utilise special effects to convey the fantastical, spectacular elements of texts. Cinema has given science fiction stories an avenue through which to create remarkable vistas and make them appear ‘real’ to the audience. These range from the grand imagery of the Death Star blowing up the planet Alderaan in Star Wars to the smaller scale body horror of alien life bursting out of still-living human beings in the Alien film series and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Practitioners of science fiction across all entertainment mediums feel that the stage cannot match this level of visual illusion. David Dean Bottrell, a producer of Sci-Fest (the first Los Angeles Science Fiction one-act play festival), spoke of this challenge in the lead up to the inaugural festival in 2014:

We cannot compete with television and film. We can’t do those kinds of special effects. So what we do instead is we sort of make up for that with the quality of the material, the quality of the writing, the quality of the performance, and the imagination that goes into it.

(This Sci-Fi Stage Show Blew Our Minds!, 2014, 00:02:23)

The quality of material, writing, and performance is where science fiction theatre can differentiate itself from other mediums in the genre. High quality science fiction texts and productions can be found across all entertainment mediums, and theatre is much less accessible for prospective audience members than its primary competitors film and television. The theatre offers a level of interaction for its audience that no other medium can replicate and can prompt audiences to discuss the text during the intermission or afterwards in a manner other mediums would struggle to replicate. It encourages a greater level of social interaction from the audience than screen media. If “the audience of even the most ‘culinary’ theatre is involved in a reciprocal relationship” (Bennett, pp.20-21), would science fiction fans not benefit from the types of discussions engaging with the theatre generates? If science fiction is a genre of ideas, with an emphasis on texts of a cognitive and contemplative nature, then the theatre is the ideal medium to explore these stories. The theatre could assist the science fiction genre by becoming a home for the next generation of science fiction creators, and in turn could benefit from any advances made with dedicated attendees and consumers engaging with live performance spaces on a greater level than is currently occurring.

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How science fiction benefits the theatre

In 2017, British playwright Tim Foley debuted his science fiction play Astronauts of Hartlepool (2017), a dystopian, post-Brexit dark comedy. Foley wrote about the production ahead of its first performances for the online theatre publication Exeunt Magazine as part of an article arguing that theatres should be staging more science fiction productions and “embracing the weird.” (Foley, 2017) Towards the end of the article, Foley states what he views as a potential benefit for staging science fiction productions:

Nobody wants sci-fi for the sake of it. I wouldn’t immediately argue against a Hamlet set in space (I have a wonderful visual of the end fight with lightsabers), but the reason you do anything in any certain way is because that way is necessary to the thing you want to do. That’s a really roundabout way of saying WHY DO IT, and if the answer is ‘because it’s fun’, then cool, great, run with that. But so often the great thing about science fiction is the fresh take it provides on an old problem.

(Foley, 2017)

This fresh perspective is critical to the second key finding for this chapter regarding how the theatre could benefit from becoming a more welcoming environment for generating new, original works of science fiction: The adaptability of the science fiction genre, with its ever-shifting boundaries of definition and broad scope for narrative and thematic possibilities, offers writers, performers, directors, and other theatre practitioners new creative challenges that can enhance their creative capacities and the medium as a whole.

Science fiction texts present a wider variety of options to artistic practitioners than most other genres. As discussed in the Literature Review chapter, Margaret Atwood said the borders around the science fiction genre were “increasingly undefended, and things slip back and forth across them with insouciance.” (Atwood, 2011) These “things” can be but are not limited to, narrative structures, character archetypes, emotions, themes, time periods, and places. Theatrical practitioners can use them to construct science fiction stories that communicate any number of different meanings. Sometimes, the same source text can generate many different meanings between productions. The oft-adapted Frankenstein has been through countless

180 interpretations, with the central core thematic elements varying wildly between companies, locations, and time. Two recent productions – Danny Boyle’s 2011 London production and Scott McArdle’s 2016 Perth production – both portrayed The Creature closer to Shelley’s original depiction, moving away from the shambling monstrosity he became in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century adaptations. However, their portrayals of Victor Frankenstein were drastically different. McArdle’s version aimed to stage the events of the novel as Shelley wrote them, preserving Captain Walton and his rescue of Victor, as well as Victor’s childhood and education, all of which leads to the creation of The Creature at the end of the play’s first act. This production was the third in a trilogy of plays staged in the Nexus Theatre in 2016 called The Gothics, along with Dracula (2016) and The Mummy Rises (2016). This framing is significant, as McArdle focussed his adaptation of Frankenstein on the elements of the horror genre present in the text, mainly gothic horror. Victor was the focal point of the narrative, and his childhood was utilised in the first act to lay the groundwork for the horrors and pain he would endure at the hands of his creation in the second act. McArdle depicts the death of Victor’s mother Caroline early in the play (she is trampled to death by a frightened horse during a storm) and subsequently Victor is ‘haunted’ by her throughout his life. It is not clear if Caroline is a real ghost in the world of the narrative or a hallucination of her grieving son, allowing McArdle to explore the possibility of Victor’s thoughts, driving him to madness. Victor Frankenstein is the archetypal ‘Mad Scientist’ after all.73

In his version of Frankenstein, Boyle examined the duality of Victor and The Creature as two sides of the same coin. He emphasised this point by casting Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller as both Victor and The Creature, with the actors switching roles between performances. As such, Boyle’s adaptation begins not with Victor’s childhood or the novel’s opening with Captain Walton recounting his rescue of a near-dead Victor, but with the ‘birth’ of The Creature. Cumberbatch/Miller force themselves out of a partly organic, partly mechanical ‘womb’ and we see The Creature

73 American author Jess Nevins wrote a two-part essay on the history of fictional ‘Mad Scientists’ in 2011 (Alchemists, Astronomers, and Wild Men: A History of the Mad Scientist & Organ Theft and The Insanity of Geniuses: A History of Mad Scientists in the Industrial Age) in which he explores the real-world influences on this science fiction archetype. Although Victor Frankenstein was by no means the first ‘Mad Scientist’, he became the most iconic due to, in part at least, the theatre: “It was not until Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, the popular 1823 stage adaptation of Shelley's novel, and the third, revised edition of Frankenstein in 1831 that Victor von Frankenstein began to cast a shadow over other mad scientists.” (Nevins, 2011) 181 learn to live: to breath, stand, walk, run, and make noise, before being cast out by his horrified creator. Although Victor had a life before this event, he is metaphorically born in his role as ‘Creator’ with the arrival of The Creature.

The Frankenstein’s of Boyle and McArdle are wildly different retellings of the same story, yet both succeed as compelling science fiction theatre productions. The difficulty in defining what science fiction is could be one of the genre’s greatest strengths. The genre’s insouciant borders allow those who work in creating or adapting it incredible freedom. You can make adaptations that are drastically different from the original piece in any genre (the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1813) in the early twenty-first century to both the book and film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009, 2016) – where the Bennett sisters are trained warriors who fight off hordes of the undead – springs to mind). They are, however, more likely to be met with scorn, derision, and negative reviews for being so different. Ridicule is less likely to happen in the science fiction genre, home to many wildly different types of text. 1984 and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are extremely distinct from one another in tone, message, and purpose, but both are equally valid as works of science fiction.

It is this freedom to create, to blend, and to re-interpret that should excite theatrical practitioners. Presenting fresh takes on old problems, as Foley put it. In Astronauts of Hartlepool, he explores alienation and grief through a series of repeated meetings between the characters Aidan and Nadia, with the latter being different versions of the same person from multiple alternate dimensions. Each meeting is, therefore, a ‘first’ meeting between the two and allows Foley to explore his narrative themes through the framework of ‘Multiverse Theory’. In the seventh episode of @lantis – ‘It’s a Wonderful Mind’ – I also examined alienation and grief as thematic elements. The unexpected death of Mary’s estranged wife Eleanor left her feeling isolated from her community, unable to cope with her grief at losing someone she loved dearly, even despite their many years of physical and emotional separation. The ‘novum’ of It’s a Wonderful Mind – the technology Mary developed that allowed neural pathways to be manipulated, repaired, or closed off – is utilised by Mary in an attempt to remove her memories of Eleanor and enable her to end her grieving. It’s a Wonderful Mind & Astronauts of Hartlepool examine the concept of grieving through very different scientific lenses (AoH utilises theoretical Physics, IaWM employs a biological and technological approach). The

182 options available to the theatre practitioners that use science fiction texts, elements, and frameworks are near limitless, and offer a plethora of unique experiences through which to communicate their ideas.

The second major benefit science fiction offers the theatre relates to a comment made by the science fiction playwright Alan Ayckbourn regarding his hopes for the intersection of science fiction texts and live performance. Speaking to the BBC in 2017, Ayckbourn stated that he believes science fiction can attract new, younger audiences to the theatre by making them feel wanted and accepted within the performance space:

Science fiction is a great leveller. It gives you an even playing field, where you say to your younger audience, ‘now this is a world I don’t know, but I have created, and you don’t know, and you can inhabit it.’ […] If you see things that you think ‘I’ve done that, I’ve been there. That’s happened to me, or it’s happened to a close friend of mine.’ That is more important than any amount of marketing.

(Alan Ayckbourn hopes sci-fi will attract a younger audience, 2017, 00:00:21)

The issue that some practitioners think has prevented this ‘great leveller’ from achieving critical or commercial success in live performance spaces is an unwillingness from sections of the community to embrace science fiction. One such practitioner, Tiffany Keane, was interviewed by Vice Magazine in 2016 in her capacity as the artistic director of Otherworld Theatre74 about science fiction theatre: "I have definitely felt from the theatre community, that this is not real theatre. […] There are many playwrights who are trying to write in the sci-fi genre who are not getting produced." (Wagstaff, 2016) This attitude towards science fiction is an issue for both the medium of theatre and the science fiction genre.

My third key finding for this chapter is that Science fiction can attract new audiences to the theatre. If the theatre embraces science fiction stories and productions, it will benefit both medium and genre. Furthermore, does the theatre need science fiction

74 Located in the US city of Chicago, Illinois, Otherworld Theatre is a venue dedicated to staging productions of a science fiction and fantasy nature that has been in operation since 2012. In late 2019, I was fortunate enough to visit the Otherworld Theatre and experience attending science fiction and fantasy productions in a space dedicated to the genre. I was also able to observe the audiences, who were mostly aged between the ages of 18 and 29, and how they interacted with the productions presented to them. 183 more than science fiction needs the theatre? Which will last longer, the genre or the medium?

The survey findings reveal three outcomes with relevance to the above statement:

1. There is an audience for science fiction works in the theatre. Two-thirds (67.4%) of those surveyed considered themselves to be regular consumers of science fiction, with almost 80% of those who attended the theatre 7+ times per annum being regular consumers of science fiction texts. 2. Science fiction can attract a greater diversity of audiences into theatrical spaces. @lantis attracted a higher percentage of audience members who were male (45%) than the average demographics for live theatre in Western culture (34%),75 and the average age of the audience was 34.9 years, considerably younger than the average theatre attendee age of 52. 3. Audiences do not utilise the theatre as a medium to consume science fiction texts. Television (86.8%) and film/cinema (85.3%) are the primary mediums through which audiences interact with science fiction texts. Video games (53.5%) were third, just ahead of literature (52.8). One-fifth of those surveyed consume science fiction through podcasts. Only 1.5% of audience members surveyed said that they engaged with science fiction through theatre and live performance.

Despite these factors, the science fiction genre has yet to take off in the theatre. Perhaps not because of issues rooted in science fiction, as they are in the culture around the theatre. Science fiction is a genre that is mostly unrestricted by its conventions. The fact that it is difficult to define what is and what is not a science fiction text means that the genre is fluid, malleable, can meet several purposes and serve many masters. Theoretically, science fiction texts could have a broader appeal than other genres staged in the theatre.

75 Data for average theatre demographics in Western culture sourced from The Audience Agency over at https://www.theaudienceagency.org/asset/1104 184

Contributions to Knowledge of @lantis

@lantis was written and staged as the key component of the extensive and innovative research for this thesis. The contributions to knowledge this project have made are as follows:

1. An original science fiction theatre work: @lantis

@lantis itself, as a work of theatre, is a significant contribution to the science fiction theatre canon and our understanding of the practice. It is an original work that is significant as both theatre and more specifically science fiction theatre due to the innovative approaches it applied and delivered to the stage; its episodic nature, its multimedia approach (performed as live theatre but also subsequently available to consume as an audio drama), and its use of intertextual references and comedy to explore scientific concepts and real-world issues in an informative and entertaining manner. Whilst other original works of science fiction theatre may have attempted to stage these aspects individually, 76 @lantis is likely the first production to attempt all three as part of the same production.

2. Science fiction theatre does not have to be visual to work.

The visual fidelity of science fiction on screen is often informally cited as being a key component of their critical success or failure. One of the reasons Jurassic Park is often cited as one of the great successes of not just science fiction cinema but blockbuster cinema is because of the dinosaurs it depicted through a mixture of

76 A.) Episodic science fiction theatre is uncommon, with Mac Rogers’ The Honeycomb Trilogy the most notable example. However, the three plays that make up the trilogy (Advance Man, Blast Radius, and Sovereign) are stand-alone productions set in the same universe but not in the same time periods and not following a cast of characters as in @lantis. The debut performances of The Honeycomb Trilogy were staged over a six-month period in 2012, not at week-long intervals like @lantis.

B.) The National Theatre’s 2011 production of Frankenstein could be said to have something of a multimedia approach given that it was filmed and broadcast as part of the National Theatre Live program that screens stage productions, although I am uncertain that the filming of the production was a consideration of the show’s design in the same way the recording and publishing of @lantis as an audio drama was. I can find no examples of another science fiction production that has attempted to do what @lantis did in this regard.

C.) The use of intertextual references and comedy is more common in science fiction television (Rick and Morty, Red Dwarf, The Orville, etc) but has occasionally happened in stage productions as well (Rocky Horror, One Woman Alien, Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, etc.)

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puppetry and the then-emerging practice of CGI effects.77 Audiences are primed to judge a work of science fiction on how realistic it looks, even in non-screen mediums such as theatre. As such, presenting a theatrical work like @lantis, which did not attempt to attain the visual or aesthetic reality of the world of the narrative on stage, could have posed a challenge for audience members who are more used to extensive visual storytelling in their science fiction texts. However, the overwhelmingly positive responses from the surveys, theatre reviewers, and informal feedback demonstrates that audiences are able to engage with a largely non-visual science fiction work on stage, provided the production is of the requisite quality to meet with or exceed their expectations. The audience of @lantis were invited to participate in the meaning-making of the performance, and this act of theatrical exchange was a central reason for the show’s critical success.

3. Completely original science fiction texts written for the theatre can work on the stage and attract/retain audiences.

As evidenced in the survey responses, even on the relatively small scale of results the survey yielded, @lantis attracted an audience that was largely theatre literate but also not commonly exposed to science fiction on the stage. Even more significantly, audience members returned to see subsequent episodes over the course of the season of shows and cited their enjoyment of the previous performances as the reason they returned.

4. Episodic, serialised science fiction, a format more commonly seen in other entertainment mediums, works in the theatre.

@lantis was written episodically in part to see if weekly, episodic theatre could attract a repeat audience, particularly with a science fiction narrative and setting. As evidenced by the survey responses mentioned above, episodic science fiction

77 “The trick was to make dinosaurs look real. Alan, Ellie and self-described “chaotician” Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) have to look gobsmacked at their first sight of brachiosauruses gazing peacefully in a field. If what we see looks convincing, the movie has its hooks in us. If it doesn’t, it falls apart. [Steven] Spielberg bet he could make it work – and the gamble paid off, in large part because it’s easy to forget we’re watching special effects at all. A quarter century and many several generations of FX advances later, Jurassic Park‘s creatures don’t look like CGI creations at all. They look like dinosaurs.” (‘Jurassic Park’ at 25: How Spielberg’s Dinos-Run-Wild Blockbuster Changed the Game. Rolling Stone Magazine. 2018.) 186

theatre has some capacity to draw in an audience multiple times over a season of shows.

5. Science fiction texts can benefit from the ‘liveness’ of performance.

Performing science fiction in live performance spaces can enhance a production with the element of ‘liveness’ – the interaction between performer and audience. The cast of @lantis benefited from the presence of an audience due in part to the reactions they elicited from them. The jokes and comedy they had spent the last three or more months rehearsing without a reaction during the rehearsal period was now receiving chuckles and laughter from the audience. I had to direct the cast to not ‘play up’ to the audience part way through the run, as some actors were changing the style of the performances and vocal delivery they had rehearsed to elicit more laughter from the audience. Additionally, it was telling to me during the voice recording sessions for @lantis: Self-Isolation in 2020 that the actors were struggling at points to achieve the same levels of performance as they achieved during the 2018 season. This was partly due to the impromptu nature of @lantis: Self-Isolation, as well as the fact they all recorded their dialogue separately, but the performances were affected by not being in the theatre and by the absence of the audience and the ‘liveness’ they provide.

Conclusion

Having reflected upon my findings from the production of @lantis and my analysis of the associated survey results, I assert that there are two main findings of my research:

1.) The adaptability of the science fiction genre, with its ever-shifting boundaries of definition and broad scope for narrative and thematic possibilities, offers writers, performers, directors, and other theatre practitioners new creative challenges that can enhance their creative capacities. 2.) Science fiction can attract new audiences to the theatre. If the theatre embraces science fiction stories and productions, it will benefit both medium and genre.

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With these findings, the final chapter of this exegesis concludes by summarising the study as a whole and looking to what possible futures await the practice of science fiction in theatre. There is also a discussion on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on live entertainment, and the role science fiction narratives may have in shaping the landscape of post-COVID theatre and live performance.

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Chapter Eight – Conclusions

This chapter concludes the thesis by summarising my findings from the research components undertaken and asks questions regarding the futures of science fiction and live theatre in a post-Covid world. It also foregrounds the potential interactions and collaborations to come between the genre and entertainment medium.

Introduction

When I began my post-graduate studies into science fiction in the theatre in 2014, the question “Why is there so little science fiction on stage?” drove my desire to explore the topic. At that time, I was not entirely incorrect in my belief that science fiction texts and stories were severely underrepresented in live performance spaces. However, the practice was happening in small pockets around the world. While there was a history of science and fiction based upon science performed on the stage dating back to the late seventeenth century,78 science fiction had not grown at the same rate in the theatre as it had in literature and subsequently film, television, and video games. Since I began my studies, the genre has started to flourish on the stage in several small ways. There are an increasing number of festivals (TALOS Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London, Sci-Fest LA) and venues (Otherworld Theatre in Chicago, 56 Leadenhall Street in London)79 dedicated to staging science fiction shows. This increase in festivals, venues, and the number of science fiction productions, staged by the general theatre community locally in Perth and internationally in live performance hotbeds including New York’s Off-Broadway theatres, leads me to conclude that the future of science fiction theatre has some promise. These productions are staged by a mixture of professional, semi-professional and amateur production companies and theatrical practitioners who are increasingly either fans of science fiction or engaging with the genre on greater levels than previous generations. However, science fiction remains largely untouched by the mainstream of live theatre, with very few productions reaching the stages of Broadway or the West End. As such, I feel that I must re-phrase my original

78 Thomas Shadwell’s play The Virtuoso being the earliest example, as discussed in the chapter The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction. 79 The venue which houses Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience and affiliated Steampunk bar/restaurant. 189 question going forward as “Why are there so few opportunities for science fiction productions in the theatre?”

The three questions that I have answered throughout this exegesis were:

1. What are the benefits of performing science fiction as a live performance? 2. What can the theatre do for science fiction texts that other mediums cannot? 3. Why is science fiction good for the medium of theatre?

The theatrical practitioners (writers, directors, producers, performers, etc) and the audience provide answers to the first question. Science fiction as live performance offers a great many benefits creatively and artistically to creators, as well as benefiting the theatres by attracting new audiences to performance venues and spaces. The survey results from the @lantis project produced two major findings that showcase the potential benefits:

1. There is an audience for science fiction works in the theatre. Two-thirds (67.4%) of those surveyed considered themselves to be regular consumers of science fiction, with almost 80% of those who attended the theatre 7+ times per annum being regular consumers of science fiction texts. 2. Science fiction can attract a greater diversity of audiences into theatrical spaces. @lantis attracted a higher percentage of audience members who were male (45%) than the average demographics for live theatre in Western culture (34%), and the average age of the audience was 34.9 years, considerably younger than the average theatre attendee age of 52.

This diversity of the audiences attending @lantis reflects the genre’s capacity to attract new people to the theatre. Given that two-thirds of the surveyed @lantis audience identified as science fiction consumers/fans, it is promising to see that such people can and do seek out science fiction texts away from the genre’s well-established home bases of books and screen media. The increased opportunity to access science fiction theatre is, therefore, a benefit to the consumer. Texts change depending on the mediums. As I discussed in The Theatre Genealogy of Science Fiction, the nature of the narrative is transformed in adaptations of Frankenstein from novel to stage plays to film. These productions changed the audience’s view of the Creature at the centre of the story from “an intelligent being in search of its destiny, into a pathetic, brutish killer conceived in a

190 sinister laboratory during a thunderstorm by a crazed scientist and his hunchbacked assistant.” (Willingham, p. 25) Boris Karloff’s film depiction of Frankenstein’s creation became the template for audience comparison for every subsequent portrayal of the Creature post-1931 and an iconic character in the pantheon of Horror. The merits of whether or not this was good for preserving the integrity of Shelley’s narrative aside, the presentation of the text in new entertainment mediums allowed it to grow beyond its origins. This growth and change form a significant part of Frankenstein’s legacy as the cornerstone for the genre of science fiction. Theatre was the testing ground (much like Victor’s laboratory) in which the experiments of creativity intermingling with scientific knowledge, where Suvin’s ‘scientia’ and ‘sapientia’ could meet, unleashing something new and unique into the world that captured the minds and imaginations of those who witnessed it.

Going forwards, the academic discourse around science fiction in theatre and live performance needs to grow to aid our understanding of this emerging practice. Further academic and critical writing on the matter is likely due to the growing interest in the science fiction genre in general, and the relevance of science fiction to our world where scientific and technological advancements have an increasingly notable impact on our lives. The intersection between science and performance is already evident in the academic community and likely to grow. Although science fiction theatre does not need academic discourse to advance, an increased understanding and engagement with it on an academic and critical level could support the practice.

Theatrical adaptations of existing works allow audiences to see the science fiction narratives of literature, film, and television brought to life in different and exciting ways. The theatre is immersive and has the capacity for interaction and change; the text presented can be more active than in other pre-recorded media formats. It is also a space that can birth new engaging texts for the genre. Rocky Horror became a cultural phenomenon, with its 1975 film adaptation becoming synonymous with the phrase ‘cult hit’. The film made the Rocky Horror narrative, characters, songs, and themes infamous. It would not exist, however, without the theatre offering a space for the creator Richard O’Brien to stage his original work. The theatrical conventions this work embraced and retained aided its filmed adaptation. Few other film musicals of any genre have sparked audience involvement in the way Rocky Horror did. The film treats the audience as

191 though they were in a theatre, not a cinema, with characters addressing the viewer directly and, in the case of The Narrator, teaching them the choreography of the ‘Time Warp’ dance. Rocky Horror stands alone as the most significant original science fiction stage text for the notable impact it has had on the broader science fiction discourse, with the possible exception of R.U.R for introducing the word ‘robot’ into the English language.

The theatre offers science fiction practitioners opportunities to explore the genre through a multitude of lenses: improvised theatre (Captain Spaceship), scripted comedy (Stasis, One Woman Alien), musical (208480 & We Sing, I Sang), Queer theatre (Mission Creep), radio play (@lantis, Laika), absurdism (Cosmic Bottle), Afrofuturism (I Will Tell You In A Minute), and so on. Some of these lenses, neglected by screen media and literature, find homes in live performance spaces, making the theatre a vital medium for telling and exploring specific types of science fiction narratives. Theatre’s most telling contributions to science fiction might still be yet to come, with the integration of technology into live performance spaces also allowing for new forms of storytelling to take place. My experience attending Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience in December 2019 was one of the most engaging theatrical productions in which I have taken part.81 It integrates the theatrical with the technological in a way that presents the world of the narrative more effectively than any prior stage or live performance adaptation I have seen. It would be almost impossible for a traditional stage production to effectively create the experience of being a refugee of the Martian invasion. WOTW: The Immersive Experience can take its audience through the whole ordeal step by step. At one point in the production I took part in, the actor portraying the Royal Astronomer Ogilvy singled me out from our group of ten when we reached the ‘crashed meteor’ and asked me to describe what I could see ahead of me. The space looked like a forest, at the far end of which was the landing site of the ominous Martian missile. Having played the role of Ogilvy in the Murdoch Theatre Company production of Howard Koch’s The War of the Worlds, I found myself recalling my old

80 Not strictly speaking an original work, being a quasi-prequel to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four novel but included here due to the text and characters being almost entirely original creations inhabiting the world created by Orwell. 81 Taking part is very much what the audience of WOTW: The Immersive Experience does. You are a part of the narrative, your very existence is key to everything that occurs, unlike most theatrical plays which could happen with or without you sat in the audience watching events unfold. 192 lines but then trying not to say them word-for-word so as to not steal this Ogilvy’s next few lines. The world of the text and the mechanics of the production in motion engrossed me. It was a level of engagement that few other works of any entertainment medium have achieved for me. It is part of the reason why I argue that the theatre and live performance in general is a medium that offers science fiction texts, adaptation or original, a great many benefits that producers and practitioners are not currently taking up in a significant way.

I assert that a consequence of the theatre becoming more of a home for science fiction engagement would be the genre benefiting the act of theatre creation itself. Writers introducing new stories and ideas into the theatre will necessitate new approaches to how practitioners interact with the medium. The staging of my original work @lantis excited me as a practitioner because of the opportunity to create two different audience experiences from the same performance: the live theatrical audience and the online audio listeners. While any text could be staged this way, working with the science fiction genre encouraged me to play with the format and medium of the production. I engaged with the culture of innovation and experimentation present in science and science fiction, and the result was that these behaviours impacted my behaviour and decisions as a theatrical practitioner. I think it is unlikely that I would have thought to present a non-science fiction performance text in this way. Science fiction stories are primarily a presentation of new ideas, and their narratives benefit from theatre’s ‘liveness’, its interactivity, and the accessibility the medium offers to engaged, participatory audiences.

Science fiction can attract new audiences to the theatre. If the theatre embraces science fiction stories and productions more fully, with a concerted effort to nourish and grow the genre going forwards, it will benefit both the medium and genre. Generally, audiences do not currently utilise the theatre as a medium to consume science fiction texts.82 A concerted effort from the world of theatre, by which I mean the writers, actors, directors, technicians, designers, and producers, to become a welcoming home to the genre could also keep the practice of theatre itself alive. I have found myself asking the following two questions throughout my studies: Does the theatre need science fiction more than science fiction needs the theatre? Which will last longer, the

82 See Chapter Six – Analysis of Survey Data. 193 genre or the medium? Now I acknowledge here that the second question is somewhat unknowable, a reverse of the hypothetical conundrum “Which came first? The Chicken or the Egg?”, but I believe this is important to consider as we look towards the future. Science fiction has proven to be a popular and profitable genre in most entertainment mediums, and producers will likely continue to manipulate facets of our collective knowledge to create stories. The sciences form such an integral part of modern society that it will likely continue to infuse our cultural practices from here onwards. Theatre as a practice has survived for a couple of thousand years that we know of, and performance art of one kind or another seems integral to human societies the world over. However, the financial side of the theatre is not an immortal part of the human experience. Businesses fail, industries die away over time. The modern theatre industry faces issues of relevance against competition from other more accessible entertainment mediums and, more recently, the social upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, much of the world is in some form of lockdown. Social isolation practices that are vital to limit the spread of the disease have harmed business practice across all sectors, with the arts hit significantly hard by the change. Theatre as a practice has survived outbreaks of disease in the past. Still, the global nature of COVID-19 and the enforcement of health ordinances could see many companies and venues go bankrupt and leave swathes of the theatre community out of work and unable to ply their trade for many months, potentially years.

Will audiences return if we can hold large social gatherings, and the theatre venues can open their doors once more? Indeed, there may well be those clamouring for a return to the theatres after a period of enforced distance and non-engagement, but a great many factors could impact their numbers. How soon after the theatres are permitted to re-open could companies stage a show? Theatrical productions take time to prepare, and social distancing restrictions will have impacted on a production company’s capacity to rehearse, rig lighting, source materials for costume and make-up, build sets, and so on. All the while, even during the lockdown, screen media and literature have been consumed relatively unimpeded. The film industry has been affected negatively with the forced closure of cinemas around the world, but some distributors have enacted workarounds such as releasing new movies on streaming services. While new productions for film and television will also be affected,

194 broadcasters and streaming services have been able to continue entertaining. Their businesses have been able to continue bringing in some degree of revenue, while theatres have been starved of income. Additionally, audience finances will also be lower than they were before the outbreak. Higher unemployment rates and reduced working hours mean less disposable income is available to use for activities such as entertainment. People might prefer to pay for a month’s subscription to a streaming service and watch content on-demand instead of paying an equivalent price to attend a play for one evening. The reluctance of people to go to the theatre is also going to be exacerbated by potentially exposing themselves to other members of the public, putting themselves at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 or other illnesses.

Whatever the future holds for theatre, science fiction should be (and I believe will be) an increasingly important part of it. Science fiction plays are not a cure-all response for a great many issues the theatre faces as it enters the 2020’s, but it could help the recovery post COVID-19. For theatres to draw people in, they have to offer experiences that either no other entertainment medium can or produce shows that are different enough from what is on offer elsewhere. The general public could continue to consider science fiction stage shows as an oddity, a strange bedfellow for live performance. They could also speak to a new generation83 of theatregoers. In a world looking for hope and answers, science fiction can provide, even if only for hypothetical questions. For those people who seek social connection and community having had it forcibly reduced or removed by the pandemic, theatre and live performance offer spaces for social integration and interaction. Combining science fiction texts, particularly those of a Utopic bent, with theatre in the aftermath of the crisis could well prove to be the launchpad for science fiction theatre to take off from and boldly go into its own Golden Age of poetic truth.

83 I do not use the term ‘generation’ in an age sense here, but more in a timeline manner: the pre-COVID- 19 generation and the post-COVID-19 generation. 195

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Appendices – Website for @lantis

The official website for @lantis is available to access at the following link: https://www.atlantisradioplay.com/

On this website, you will find the following:

• Links to the audio versions of the seven episodes of the 2018 season of @lantis, and to the special 2020 COVID-19 mini-episode ‘Self-Isolation’, all of which can be streamed from the site or downloaded to listen to offline. • Information about each of the seven episodes of the 2018 season of @lantis. • Downloadable programs for each of the seven episodes of the 2018 season of @lantis. • Image galleries of all the original artwork that was used during the performances of the 2018 season of @lantis. • Information about the cast and crew from the 2018 season of @lantis.

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Appendices – Script for @lantis Episode One: Fish Out of Water

A note to the reader: Next to the names of the characters at the start of each scene, you will see a single letter within some parentheses. These indicate to the performers which of the on-stage microphones they were to deliver their lines into.

@lantis

Episode One: “Fish Out of Water” Written by Stephen B. Platt

PROLOGUE – NARRATION

ANNOUNCER (C) Under the ocean, far beneath a future world of utopic super-cities and dwindling resources, is a domed mega-structure named @lantis. Built as a safe haven from the chaos of the world above, learned minds are housed together, advancing scientific knowledge and creating new ideas and contraptions to make the world a better place, whilst generating a decent profit margin.

This is @lantis!

THEME TUNE PLAYS ANNOUNCER Written and directed by Stephen B. Platt. Starring Nicola Brescianini as Dorothy, Murray Jackson as Jules, Tegan Mulvany as Mary, Max Rankin as Harry and Nic Doig as Lug. This week – Episode One: Fish Out of Water.

SCENE ONE – @LANTIS CHIEF OF SECURITY OFFICE, @LANTIS

DOROTHY GODDARD enters the office of CHIEF LAURA COSTAIN.

DOROTHY (C) Officer Dorothy Goddard reporting for duty, Chief.

CHIEF (B) At ease, Officer. Take a seat.

DOROTHY pulls up a chair and takes a seat at the CHIEF’S desk. 199

CHIEF Goddard, this is the Bursar of @lantis, Moritz Snidal. He’s in charge of the city’s finances.

DOROTHY A pleasure to meet you sir.

BURSAR (A) (Bored, disdainful) I’m sure it is. Laura, can we please make this quick? I have other, more important places to be.

CHIEF This won’t take very long. Now, Officer Goddard, the reason we have called you in here today is concerning the vacant position of Captain of Suburban Security. As you know, since Captain Young… um… ‘vacated’ the position, we have been looking for a replacement.

DOROTHY Yes Chief.

CHIEF The Bursar and I have discussed the matter at length and we’ve come to the same conclusion.

DOROTHY I gladly accept your generous offer.

CHIEF Pardon?

DOROTHY I’ll take the job.

BURSAR You misunderstand the Chief. There is no job to take.

CHIEF It has been deemed an “unnecessary expenditure” by Bursar Snidal, so we will be dismantling the current security team and re-assigning all current members – yourself included – to other departments. 200

DOROTHY You can’t do that!

BURSAR We already have.

DOROTHY The other officers won’t accept this!

CHIEF They have already signed the paperwork to transfer to their new roles.

DOROTHY What?! When?

CHIEF This morning. I’m afraid your team has been dismantled with immediate effect.

DOROTHY But… who will be providing security to the suburban blocks?

BURSAR Chief Costain assures me she can encompass the area into the patrols of other security teams at a significant reduction in operating costs.

DOROTHY So that’s it? I don’t get a say in the matter?

BURSAR No. You should consider yourself lucky that you even have a new job to go to! Were it not for the Chief, you and your former teammates would all be on the next sub to the surface!

CHIEF You have been assigned to a new position in the Research Laboratories.

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DOROTHY But the Labs already have a security team. Unless you’ve gotten rid of them as well!

CHIEF No, the lab team are still operating as they were.

BURSAR For now.

CHIEF You will be working in a specific area of the Lab; The Department of Ponderlust.

DOROTHY The Department of… Ponderlust?

CHIEF It’s an experimental think tank that works on research of a more… unusual nature.

DOROTHY Who will I be working with?

CHIEF You’ll be operating alone. The Department of Ponderlust only consists of four people. Well, four- ish people.

DOROTHY Four-ish?

BURSAR You should know that you are only on trial in this position. If after a week you are deemed unfit to hold the post or surplus to requirements, you will have your employment terminated and must leave @lantis.

DOROTHY Leave?

BURSAR Times are tough, Officer Goddard. We cannot afford free loaders. You have been given this chance to prove yourself a worthwhile member of the 202

community. Now if you’ll excuse me ladies, I must be off to attend to more important matters.

DOROTHY Did someone drop a penny in the corridor?

BURSAR One week Goddard. That’s all the time you have to impress us.

The BURSAR exits.

DOROTHY I can’t believe this! Four years of loyal service and for what?

CHIEF I’m sorry Dorothy. I’ve done everything I can to keep you here. The rest is up to you.

DOROTHY Do you have any advice?

CHIEF Don’t interfere with the Ponderlust team unless things get really out of hand. Some of them are not the friendliest. Be careful and keep those people safe. Remember, above all else our duty is to security over science.

DOROTHY Yes, Ma’am.

SCENE TWO – ELEVATOR CORRIDOR, PONDERLUST LAB

The noises of an elevator descending and coming to a stop are heard. The elevator doors open as an automated V/O plays.

ELEVATOR (VO) Floor thirty-four, Ponderlust Laboratory. Visitors are reminded that @lantis Labs are not responsible for any injuries sustained of a physical, mental or spiritual nature during your visit.

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DOROTHY (C) Well that’s comforting.

DOROTHY exits the elevator, which closes behind her. She walks down the corridor. She can only hear the quiet hum of the ventilation. DOROTHY is nervous.

DOROTHY Hello?

No one responds. DOROTHY puts her hand onto her sidearm that is holstered in her beltline.

DOROTHY (To self) Nothing to worry about Dorothy. A quiet corridor doesn’t mean these crazy scientists opened up a portal to some god-forsaken place and unleashed who knows what on the base. They’re probably all studying. Yeah, studying. That’s what scientists do. They’re just professional nerds. Nerds with qualifications. Nothing at all down here to…

LUG (D) Pardon this intrusion.

DOROTHY jumps and screams at the same time. She turns to see an enormous orange skinned humanoid, possibly nine feet tall, looming behind her. She acts quickly, shooting her sidearm at the beast.

DOROTHY Argh!

DOROTHY’S shot hits LUG right in the face. There is a moment of silence, as DOROTHY looks on in amazement and terror. LUG hasn’t moved an inch.

LUG You appear to have discharged your firearm into my face. That wasn’t very nice.

DOROTHY screams and runs away from LUG. She pants heavily until she runs straight into HARRY.

HARRY (A) Ooof!

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DOROTHY (B) Sir, you have to run! There is a monster of some kind in the corridor! We have to evacuate!

HARRY Oh no! Don’t tell me the Doc didn’t lock the cage properly!

DOROTHY What?

HARRY I keep telling her that she needs to push against the door when she closes the latch!

DOROTHY Sir, we have to leave now!

HARRY What did it look like? Blue and furry or turquoise and wavy?

DOROTHY It was orange and… bulgy.

HARRY Orange and bulgy?

The rumble of heavy footsteps grow louder.

DOROTHY It’s coming! Get to the evacuation chutes and warn Chief Costain we have an unknown creature on the loose!

HARRY Wait, you don’t mean Lug do you?

DOROTHY Lug?

LUG rounds the corner and stops before them. DOROTHY raises her sidearm.

LUG (C) Senior Technician, this person just shot me in the face and then ran away. I am confused as to their intentions. 205

HARRY Is this your monster?

DOROTHY Yes. What is it?

HARRY It’s okay, they’re friendly. Well, normally anyway. I’ve never shot Lug in the face before. Please, put your gun away.

DOROTHY holsters her sidearm.

HARRY Thank you, Miss…

DOROTHY It’s Officer actually, not Miss. Officer Goddard. I’m the newly appointed security officer for the Ponderlust Lab.

HARRY I… I didn’t know we had a security officer.

DOROTHY As of this morning, you do.

HARRY If you don’t mind me asking Officer, is it common practice for security personnel to shoot members of staff when they first meet?

DOROTHY That thing is a member of staff? How was I to know? It looks like a monster!

LUG Is this because my skin is orange?

DOROTHY No! No it’s nothing like that! You startled me, that’s it. Are you okay?

HARRY Oh Lug’s fine. Damn-near indestructible, in fact! You could 206

keep shooting all day and they’d keep on keeping on.

LUG If this can be avoided Officer, it would be beneficial and preferential to me.

DOROTHY I’m very sorry I shot you, Lug. It won’t happen again.

LUG Sorry? What is sorry?

HARRY It’s an apology Lug. You know, sorry. It’s that word I’m saying all the time to the Doctor and the Professor. Now you get back to work. Doctor Pote needs that power cable replaced if we’re to get this project up and running.

LUG I’m on my way, Senior Technician.

LUG marches away, it’s footsteps slowly growing quieter.

DOROTHY What is that thing?

HARRY Lug is a sort of biological android made out of some fancy quantum clay stuff. I’m not entirely sure of the science behind it. You alright?

DOROTHY Just getting my bearings. (heavy exhale)

HARRY I’m Senior Technician Harrison Kinvig but you can call me Harry. I help the Doc and the Prof with all the technical aspects of their work. Plus, I keep the toaster working too.

DOROTHY Where are they? The Doctor and the Professor? 207

HARRY checks his watch.

HARRY It’s 10:25. They’ll probably be arguing round about now.

SCENE THREE – CENTRAL OFFICE, PONDERLUST LAB

MARY and JULES are stood at opposite ends of a central console table, arguing over images projected above the console.

JULES (C) For God’s sake Mary, you don’t need to use so much power!

MARY (D) I’m afraid I do, Jules. And if that means you don’t get to build a miniature black hole gun in your room for one afternoon, then I’m sorry but you’ll just have to wait. I’ve had this procedure booked into the calendar for months.

JULES You know I don’t read calendars! They’re a…

MARY/JULES …construct of three dimensional beings validating the fallacy of the chronological passage of time!

MARY Yes Jules, I know. You’ve made your feelings on calendars perfectly clear before. That doesn’t change the fact that I booked a procedure that would require almost full usage of our power allowance for the afternoon and that you’ll just have to cope with that.

JULES Pfft! Biologists!

HARRY and DOROTHY enter the office, interrupting MARY and JULES’S argument.

HARRY (A) Morning Doc! Morning Prof! 208

MARY/JULES Morning Harry.

JULES Who’s the Strip-o-gram for?

DOROTHY (B) I beg your pardon!

HARRY She’s not a stripper! She’s a security officer.

JULES Hey, last time someone dressed like a security officer was down here, it was that dancing gigolo I booked for Mary’s birthday.

MARY He was so greasy. Urgh.

JULES Why are you here then? Did one of my colleagues jaywalk in a cafeteria or something?

DOROTHY No. Actually, I am the newly assigned security officer for the Department of Ponderlust.

MARY Really?

JULES Are you serious?

DOROTHY I certainly am. I’m Officer Dorothy Goddard and I’ll be here to make sure everything is safe in this area of @lantis.

JULES Are you going be here every day?

DOROTHY I suppose so. I’ll have to patrol the main thoroughfares at least twice a day. 209

JULES Great. Thanks, ‘cause we really need some muscle monkey with an itchy trigger finger hanging around a delicate research environment!

DOROTHY I do not have an itchy trigger finger!

HARRY You did shoot Lug in the face a few moments ago. I’d say that finger’s itchy.

MARY Goodness! Is Lug okay, Harry?

HARRY Looked fine to me Doc. I’m guessing the bullet deflected and bounced away.

MARY Oh good. Lug does so hate getting projectiles stuck in the outer membrane.

JULES When can we expect our friendly fire greetings from you, Officer?

DOROTHY I thought it was some horrible lab accident gone rogue!

MARY Well, you’re not entirely wrong about that. Oh but where are my manners? I’m Dr. Mary Pote, Biological researcher. You can call me Mary.

DOROTHY It’s nice to meet you Mary.

JULES And I’m Professor Jules Quine, Practical Physicist and an actual scientist, unlike some “Doctors” in this room. And you may absolutely NOT call me Jules. 210

DOROTHY Okay, Professor Quine.

JULES Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some top secret documents to conceal before you “accidentally find” them on your “regular patrol” or whatever bull crap you call snooping around.

JULES leaves the office.

DOROTHY Is he always like that?

MARY I’ve known Jules for twenty-three years and I think at this stage I can confidently say that he is always like that.

DOROTHY Are you two married or something?

MARY (laughter) Good heavens, no! Well, not to each other. It feels like it sometimes. That’s what happens when you work with someone for so long though.

HARRY Hey Doc. Sorry to interrupt but are the samples ready to be moved into the chamber?

MARY Oh, yes. They should be. Careful how you go moving them though. We’re only going to get one attempt at this, so it’d better be a good one.

HARRY Sure thing Doc.

HARRY exits.

MARY My apologies Dorothy. Do you mind if I call you Dorothy?

DOROTHY 211

Not at all.

MARY You have turned up on quite a special day for us here. We’re putting the last two months of my work into action, just as soon as the power is ready.

DOROTHY What is it you are doing?

MARY Come and have a look.

MARY walks over to her desk. DOROTHY follows.

MARY We live in @lantis, an underwater community that keeps us safely hidden away from the terrifying dangers of the world above. What would it be really useful for people to be able to do whilst living here?

DOROTHY (C) Umm…

MARY It’s not a trick question, just say what you’re thinking.

DOROTHY Well, it’d be great if we could breathe underwater.

MARY Exactly! Clever girl! Now, what I have been looking at is a way to incorporate the respiratory organs of underwater lifeforms into the human anatomy.

DOROTHY You want to put gills on people?

MARY In a nutshell, yes. That way, we could extract dissolved oxygen from the water whilst submerged and forego the need for oxygen tanks.

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DOROTHY That’d be pretty useful. How would you do it though?

MARY Well, the tricky part was finding the right sort of genomic sequence to splice with Human DNA to allow both respiratory systems to develop. I believe I have found the sequence required, from the Betta Splendens. You might know it better as the Siamese Fighting Fish.

DOROTHY Oh yeah, I know them. The little fish with the beautiful flowing tail?

MARY Yes. Well actually, that’s only the males but close enough. I’ve isolated sections of their genomic sequence and I believe when I combine it with Human DNA, we can create a person with a dual respiratory systems!

DOROTHY That would be a big change for humanity to go through.

MARY It would, perhaps too big a change for anyone currently alive to undergo without extensive preparations. And it is ethically problematical to make these adaptions to new-borns.

DOROTHY What are you going to do then?

HARRY (V/O INTERCOM) Okay Doc, we’re ready for you.

MARY No time to explain! Follow me and find out.

MARY skips away excitedly. DOROTHY follows.

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SCENE FOUR – THE CLONE WARDS, PONDERLUST LAB

MARY and DOROTHY enter the Clone Wards. LUG is stood by a computer system. Behind some protective glass, HARRY can be seen preparing the Cloning Pods, filling them up with a strange gooey substance.

LUG (A) Doctor Mary, the new sequences from the fishies have been extracted and uploaded.

MARY (D) Good work Lug! Did you have much trouble with holding the fish subjects still?

LUG Not once they went squish.

MARY Oh Lug! You don’t have to kill the test subjects!

LUG Big fingers, strong fingers. Too strong for fishies.

DOROTHY (C) I’m sorry to interrupt, but what exactly is this place?

JULES (B) The Clone Wards.

MARY So good of you to join us Jules. Come to support your favourite biologist in her moment of truth?

DOROTHY The Clone Wards? You guys can make clones?

JULES Well duh! Why else do you think we would we give a whole section of our lab such a stupid name? And Mary, I’m only here ‘cause you’re hogging all the power on this floor and I need to charge my phonar.

SFX of Phonar being plugged in and charging. 214

DOROTHY Phonar?

JULES Christ, do they teach you nothing in guard school? A phonar? A phone that lets you make calls deep in the ocean without using satellites? Sound familiar?

DOROTHY We just call them phones. I didn’t know it was short for phonar.

JULES Well now you do. Is this what every conversation is going to be like? You asking stupid questions and me using up my valuable time answering them?

MARY Just sit down and be quiet Jules.

HARRY enters the control room.

HARRY (A) Chambers are ready, Doc.

MARY Excellent. Is the DNA sequencing loaded?

LUG Affirmative.

MARY Super! Gentleman, Dorothy, Lug; today we make a significant step forward in the future of the human race. With the single press of a button, we will birth the first people who need not fear the waters of this world. Since time immemorial, we have braved the oceans, knowing they could claim us at any moment…

JULES reaches over and presses the button to commence the activation sequence.

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CLONE WARDS COMPUTER (VO) Cloning sequence initiated.

MARY Jules!

JULES (sarcastic) Oops. Sorry Mary. My finger must have slipped and hit the button when I gnawed off my own hand out of sheer boredom during your speech.

DOROTHY What happens now? Anything I need to be concerned with?

MARY Not at all. Once the test subjects are fully formed, we will move them into their habitation quarters for medical assessments. After a couple of days of observation, the real work will commence.

DOROTHY How many of them are you creating?

MARY Just ten. It’ll be a small control group but as it’s just myself and Lug who will be working on this project, we felt it best to keep it manageable.

DOROTHY The others aren’t going to help you?

JULES I’ve got my own projects to worry about instead of helping rear these glorified tadpoles!

MARY Jules is a physicist and therefore prefers to merely think about scientific endeavours rather than actually do some work. Harry is not allowed to interact with the clones.

HARRY I have a vested interest, you see. 216

DOROTHY I don’t follow.

MARY Harry donated his genetic sequence for this experiment. The clones will all be part-Harry, so it’s best he not be present during the experiments. It might raise some unintended ethical concerns.

DOROTHY Will they be like Harry?

MARY They might look a bit like him but they will be quite different as people. They won’t inherit his personality traits or knowledge. For the sake of the validity of the experiment though, Harry will not be involved in the assessment process.

DOROTHY Right, I see. So how long until…

CLONE WARDS COMPUTER Cloning sequence complete.

MARY Excellent! Lug, could you please enter the ward and open up the chambers for the test subjects?

LUG Affirmative.

LUG exits the room.

DOROTHY That was quick.

MARY Well they’re only going to live for two weeks, so we didn’t need to spend time building up their bodies properly. We just need to observe the functionality of their respiratory systems.

DOROTHY They only live for two weeks? 217

MARY Yes, we don’t build the clones to last very long. Otherwise they use up too many resources. We’d have to keep them fed and clothed and… it’s all too much.

DOROTHY But that’s barbaric! Giving them life only to snuff it out once you’ve used them!

MARY The clones aren’t like you and I, Dorothy. They’re not born with fully formed consciences. These particular clones have infant-like minds inside full grown bodies. They’ll be here for a couple of weeks during which time we will feed them and keep them safe whilst observing their behaviours. After a fortnight, they’ll go to sleep and not wake up again. It’s that simple.

DOROTHY It just feels wrong, ethically wrong.

JULES That is why we are the scientists and you’re just a grunt with a baton.

DOROTHY Now see here! I will not stan-

LUG Umm… everyone? We have a problem.

LUG, having just entered the room, points towards the observation window. MARY, DOROTHY and JULES approach the protective glass. The ten HYBRIDS (ATMOS) are circling around the edges of the room, claws and teeth bared.

HYBRIDS (ATMOS) (Low growls)

MARY What are the subjects doing?

HARRY They appear to be circling each other. 218

LUG As soon as they exited the chambers and noticed one another, they started doing this. I have secured the room.

DOROTHY These clones don’t look very human Doctor.

MARY Indeed. They seem to have picked up more of the fish traits than I anticipated.

HARRY Sharp teeth, claws instead of fingernails, bright colourful scaly skin. Instead of hair, it looks like they have a large fin, also colourful, which runs down the length of their back.

MARY They are rather colourful, aren’t they?

JULES Aggressive too. They look like they’re going to…

The ten HYBRIDS begin to fight with one another. They throw each other across the wards, damaging equipment and tearing one another limb from limb.

HYBRIDS (ATMOS) (Ongoing, aggressive noises, led by MAIN HYBRID)

JULES Yep, thought so. Clone fight!

HARRY Oh boy. This isn’t good.

JULES Woah! Look at that one on the left! It just pulled an arm right out of that one’s socket! Oh this is getting messy!

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DOROTHY (pulls out radio) Central Security, this is Officer Goddard…

MARY Don’t do that! We don’t want your people down here getting in the way!

DOROTHY Getting in the way? You’ve got a brawl happening in your lab! They’re ripping each other apart! The situation needs to be brought under control!

MARY We’re more than capable of doing that ourselves!

JULES Yeah, no need bringing down an official investigation into a secret cloning facility. Oops!

MARY Jules!

DOROTHY A secret facility? No one else knows about this place?

MARY Well of course they don’t! Cloning was banned by the government years ago out of some misguided sense of morality.

DOROTHY So why do you have one?

MARY @lantis has always been a place for more experimental research, doubly so here at Ponderlust. In order to advance our knowledge, we have to occasionally ignore the well-meaning but misguided edicts of the less informed.

DOROTHY But it’s illegal!

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MARY Actually, I think you’ll find we are perfectly within our rights. @lantis does not fall under any government’s jurisdiction as we are, quite literally, in international waters.

HARRY Doc! You need to see this!

MARY What is it? Oh my.

JULES There’s only one left. It’s ripped the others to shreds!

DOROTHY He doesn’t look too happy either. He’s staring right at us.

MARY It can’t see us though. This is a one way mirror. All it can see is itself.

DOROTHY Doctor, we need to contain that… thing. If it gets out into the rest of the base, who knows what’ll happen.

MARY Lug has already secured the room, there is no way for it to leave. Perhaps we could sedate it somehow…

DOROTHY Sedate it? It’s a seven foot tall fish-man that just ripped nine other equally large fish-men to bits! We have to kill it now!

MARY Perhaps you are right. But only if we can preserve…

A loud THUNK! sound reverberates around the room. The HYBRID has just run at and head-butted the glass separating the team from the Clone Wards.

HARRY What was that? 221

LUG The hybrid, it just ran into the observation mirror.

MARY It must think the reflection is another hybrid! Quickly Harry. Turn off the lights!

A loud THUNK! is followed by the shattering of glass as the HYBRID breaks through the mirror and into the observation room. The team all scream. DOROTHY pulls out her sidearm.

HARRY Too late!

DOROTHY Everyone, get behind me! You there, Hybrid thingy!

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

MARY It can’t understand you Dorothy! It doesn’t speak English!

DOROTHY Well let’s see if it understands this!

DOROTHY fires her sidearm. The HYBRID makes more unpleasant sounds as it is shot. It is unmoved and starts to growl aggressively.

DOROTHY It didn’t do anything! Is that thing bulletproof?

MARY That is a possibility. We don’t know the full effects of what crossing human and fish DNA are yet. Being immune to munitions would be a surprising and unfortunate development.

HARRY It’s the clone goo Doc. It’s based on a similar formula to the quantum clay Lug is made of.

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MARY Of course!

LUG Officer Goddard has already ascertained that my skin is bullet resistant.

DOROTHY I already said I’m sorry Lug! What do we do now?

JULES Last one to the elevator is fish food!

JULES flees from the observation room. The HYBRID growls aggressively.

DOROTHY You three better follow him! I’ll hold it off!

MARY But Officer…

DOROTHY That is a direct order! Now move!

MARY, HARRY and LUG flee from the observation room. The HYBRID howls and lunges for DOROTHY. She shoots at it again, this time hitting the HYBRID in the face. It recoils in pain.

DOROTHY I thought so. Just because you’re bullet proof doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain!

DOROTHY shoots at it once more. The HYBRID retreats and climbs up the wall and escapes into the ventilation shaft.

DOROTHY Hey! Come back here!

HARRY re-enters the room with a gun.

HARRY It’s okay Dorothy. I’ve brought back up! Where did it go?

DOROTHY It climbed up the wall and into the ventilation shaft there. 223

HARRY Oh dear. That’s not good.

DOROTHY Take me to the others. I need to know everything about this thing before I go after it.

SCENE FIVE – CENTRAL OFFICE, PONDERLUST LAB

DOROTHY and HARRY enter the office. MARY, LUG and JULES are flicking through papers, searching for helpful information.

DOROTHY (C) Are you three okay?

MARY (D) Yes. What happened?

DOROTHY That hybrid retreated into the ventilation system.

JULES (B) You let it escape into the vents? That’s it, we’re boned!

DOROTHY I didn’t let it escape anywhere! I was the only one willing to fight that thing!

JULES You’re also the only one who is paid to fight it! If it’s in the ventilation system, it could get to just about anywhere in @lantis within an hour!

MARY This is most unexpected. They shouldn’t have been so hostile.

DOROTHY Aren’t Siamese fighting fish highly aggressive though?

MARY The males can be but we used DNA extracted from the females. There is no way that- oh no. Lug?

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LUG (A) Yes Doctor?

MARY You did extract the DNA from the female fish as instructed?

LUG I… am not sure Doctor.

MARY Oh Lug!

LUG Gender is a construct, one I am not familiar with. Lug has no gender, you gave me none. It is difficult to make the distinction.

DOROTHY I’m sorry guys but I have to call this one in. I cannot allow a dangerous creature to be running around without informing command. Otherwise, I’ll lose my job.

JULES Some people might die too. But priorities, right?

MARY Dorothy…

DOROTHY I have to do this Doctor. If you broke the law it’s not my problem.

MARY No, it’s not that. Tell security to head for the exit ports. I suspect that the Hybrid will attempt to escape @lantis. Once it is out in the ocean, we’ll have little hope of catching it.

DOROTHY Of course. (pulls out radio) Central Security, this is Officer Goddard. Come in, over. (pause) Central Security, this is Officer Goddard. Come in please, over. (Pause) I’m not getting any signal.

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MARY The signal isn’t the best down here. Professor Quine’s equipment interferes with radio signals.

JULES My equipment? None of my stuff is on at the moment! Someone is hogging the power…

MARY We do not have time to argue right now! Lug, could you please escort Dorothy to the Observatory? We tend to get a better signal there.

LUG Follow me.

LUG and DOROTHY exit the room.

MARY Harry, grab the N.E.R.V.E. guns and the surveillance drone and meet me at the elevator.

HARRY (A) Yes Doc.

HARRY exits the room.

JULES What are you doing?

MARY We’re going to go out there and capture the Hybrid before Captain Hero-face calls on her goon squadron to exterminate it! Luckily, I’m guessing you turned on the signal blocker as soon as she arrived here this morning.

JULES Of course! I hate snoops. Couldn’t risk her blabbing about my top secret projects.

MARY Your paranoia comes in handy for once! Now grab your gear and meet me at the lift in one minute.

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JULES Why me?

MARY I need you and Harry to help me track the Hybrid. We need to look around storage areas or anywhere with lots of food. The Hybrid will be hungry after engaging in intense combat.

JULES Can’t Lug do this instead?

MARY Lug is busy taking Officer Goddard to the Observatory.

JULES Mary, we don’t have an observatory.

MARY Exactly.

SCENE SIX – CORRIDOR, PONDERLUST LAB

DOROTHY and LUG are walking through a corridor.

LUG (B) In here.

A door slides open. DOROTHY steps inside.

DOROTHY (A) Are you sure this is the observatory, Lug? There aren’t any windows. I’m still not getting a signal.

The door slides shut. A lock clicks in place. DOROTHY is trapped inside.

DOROTHY Hey! What’s the big idea?

LUG You are to remain here until further notice.

DOROTHY This isn’t funny!

227

LUG I can provide you with humourous material should you require it. I have been learning ‘Jokes’ to improve my communication skills.

DOROTHY I don’t care about that! You have to let me out! We’re all in great danger!

Two loud knocks rattle against the door.

DOROTHY What’s happening? Are you okay Lug?

LUG You are meant to respond with “Who’s there?” when I knock on the door twice.

DOROTHY I don’t care about your stupid ‘Knock Knock’ jokes!

LUG Hatch.

DOROTHY Hatch? Is there a hatch in here?

LUG You are meant to say “Hatch who?”

DOROTHY Bless you.

LUG That is the punch line. I am meant to say that. Then you laugh.

DOROTHY Lug, you need to let me out of here right now.

LUG I cannot. Doctor’s orders. She fears you will attempt to harm the Hybrid.

DOROTHY I’ll harm her too if that thing kills anyone! Doesn’t she know how dangerous this is? 228

LUG I suspect she does. That is why she is attempting to capture it now.

DOROTHY But it will kill her! The damn thing is bulletproof! You have to let me out or Doctor Mary will die!

LUG I cannot. I must obey my orders.

SCENE SEVEN – CORRIDOR, @LANTIS.

MARY is running down a corridor wearing a back pack. She skips around people, apologising as she goes.

MARY (C) Sorry. Pardon me. Coming through! In a little bit of a rush, sorry!

MARY’s phonar buzzes. She answers it.

JULES (D) (from phonar) Mary, do you read me?

MARY Loud and clear Jules. What is it?

JULES (from phonar) I’ve got some activity on Floor Eighteen. Intruder alarm triggered in one of the long-term supply rooms.

MARY It could just be rats but it’s worth investigating. You go there now but do not engage! I suspect we will need to use at least two N.E.R.V.E. guns to incapacitate it.

JULES (from phonar) Yeah, yeah, I know. I designed them after all.

MARY We designed them! Not just you!

JULES (from phonar) Okay Mary, remind me again how you designed a smart battery that reads the target’s 229

biochemical structure to create the appropriate high-voltage, low- amperage electrical charge to manipulate the muscle tissue without causing long-term injuries? That’s right, you can’t!

MARY If that’s the case, how did you know to intensify the electrical discharge of the impact area to allow better conductivity of the calcium that is binding with the troponin inside the muscle cells? Who told you that?

JULES (from phonar) I could have looked that up!

HARRY (B) (from phonar) Sorry to interrupt this call but there is a disturbance in the cafeteria on Floor Five being reported. Someone just called security to report banging noises coming from the ventilation shafts.

MARY Oh goodness. To the cafeteria! We don’t have much time!

SCENE EIGHT – LOCKED ROOM, PONDERLUST LAB

DOROTHY is still in the locked room, with LUG guarding outside.

LUG (B) Officer Goddard, are you still functional?

There is no response.

LUG Officer Goddard, can you hear me? Are you in need of assistance?

Two knocks rattle against the door.

LUG Who’s there?

230

DOROTHY (A) Theodore.

LUG Theodore who?

There is no response from DOROTHY.

LUG Are you still there? Officer Goddard?

LUG opens the door.

DOROTHY Theodore wasn’t open, so I knocked.

LUG begins to laugh, slowly at first before building into a crescendo of howls.

LUG This is humourous! You incorporated the door upon which you were knocking into the joke itself! I find this to be amusing! I am filled with the emotional sensation I am told is called ‘mirth’ to such an extent that my eyes are watering and my breathing is abnormal! I must lean against this wall to recompose myself. I value your use of language and this social bond we have just formed. I will now cease laughter and return to normal operational procedures. (beat) Officer Goddard, you appear to have left the vicinity of the room whilst I was incapacitated with laughter. You were supposed to remain here. I am beginning to suspect subterfuge. I am in trouble now. This is no longer humourous.

SCENE NINE – ELEVATOR, @LANTIS.

ELEVATOR (VO) Doors closing.

DOROTHY pulls out her radio as the elevator begins to move.

DOROTHY (C) Central Security, this is Officer Goddard. Do you read me? Over. 231

RADIO OPERATOR (D) Officer Goddard, we’re receiving you. State your location. Over.

DOROTHY Elevator shaft C, heading upwards from Floor Thirty-Four. We have an emergency incident. A hostile force has escaped from the Department of Ponderlust and is inside @lantis ventilation systems. The hostile is extremely dangerous. Over.

RADIO OPERATOR Understood Officer Goddard. We have an incident in progress at the cafeteria on Floor Five involving an unknown disturbance inside the ventilation systems. We have two officers in attendance. Over.

DOROTHY You need to evacuate that whole floor now! The hostile is extremely dangerous and attacking anything it encounters. We need-

The elevator door opens. The BURSAR enters.

ELEVATOR (VO) Floor Nine, Financial offices.

BURSAR (B) Oh. It’s you.

DOROTHY G-Good morning sir!

RADIO OPERATOR Officer Goddard, we lost your message part way through. Could you repeat-

DOROTHY turns off the radio.

ELEVATOR Doors closing.

BURSAR That sounded… important.

232

DOROTHY Oh, it’s nothing Mr. Snidal. Nothing really.

BURSAR Nothing normally makes less urgent sounds on the Central Security radio channels, Miss Goddard.

DOROTHY I was just… making a lunch order. It doesn’t matter though. I’ll just buy my own.

BURSAR Is it wise using official communication channels to place silly little sandwich orders?

DOROTHY No sir. Not at all.

BURSAR Then don’t do it. Nobody gets a free ride down here. In @lantis, everyone must swim or they shall surely… sink.

DOROTHY Yes, sir.

The elevator door opens.

BURSAR Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get some lunch of my own.

ELEVATOR Floor Five, Recreational Rooms and Cafeteria.

DOROTHY No Mr. Snidal, wait!

BURSAR Whatever for?

DOROTHY The cafeteria here, it’s not the best. Certainly not for a man of your standing.

233

BURSAR Nonsense. I am not so aloof that I won’t dine with my fellow @lantans.

DOROTHY Of course not sir but the café on Floor Seventeen is just… so much nicer. Let me buy you lunch, my treat!

BURSAR Oh, I wouldn’t wish to take money of a soon to be unemployed woman. She’ll need every penny she can get to survive topside. Now leave me alone.

The BURSAR exits the elevator.

DOROTHY Crap crap crap crap crap! I can’t let the Bursar enter the cafeteria! He might get killed! (pause) Which would be a bad thing? I guess? He can’t fire me if he’s dead… What am I thinking? I’ve got to keep the people of @lantis safe, even the assholes!

DOROTHY exits the elevator.

SCENE TEN – CAFETERIA ON FLOOR FIVE, @LANTIS.

DOROTHY enters the cafeteria. Everything is normal, people are sat at tables eating from food trays. There is no panic or signs of damage and mayhem anywhere.

DOROTHY (C) Okay, everything looks normal here. No one is screaming. The vents look fine, no damage there. I’d better ask around, see if anyone’s seen anything.

DOROTHY approaches the counter.

DOROTHY Excuse me?

ANNIKA (B) Yes officer?

234

DOROTHY Do you work here?

ANNIKA No. I just dress like a dinner lady for fun.

DOROTHY Sorry, I meant were you working here this morning?

ANNIKA Sure was. What’s up?

DOROTHY We had a report about a disturbance coming from the ventilation shafts in this cafeteria. Did you make that report?

ANNIKA Yeah but we’ve already got some people here looking into it. They’re in the kitchen if you want to talk to them.

DOROTHY enters the kitchen. MARY, HARRY and JULES are stood at a worktop. HARRY is operating a remote control device inside the ventilation shafts via a laptop.

MARY (C) No no no! Turn the drone to the left!

JULES (D) The disturbance reports indicate the Hybrid went right. There is no indication it went left.

HARRY (B) Which way am I turning? Left or right?

MARY Forget the directions! It’s warmer to the left. It’ll follow a heat source until it finds somewhere warm enough to nest.

JULES I thought this thing was part-fish not part-bird!

235

MARY It is part-mammal, it’ll want to find somewhere cosy. If you were human, you’d understand.

JULES (sarcastic) Har! Har!

DOROTHY (A) Why don’t you just stop and ask for directions?

MARY and JULES turn around.

JULES Hello Officer. Did you see anything interesting from our observatory?

DOROTHY Funnily enough, it appeared to be a broom cupboard that doubles up as a prison cell!

MARY Dorothy, I’m…

DOROTHY Save it for the judge. You three are in very, very big trouble.

From next door inside the cafeteria comes the noise of the HYBRID leaping out of the ventilation shaft and onto a table. The screams of both the HYBRID and the diners (all ATMOS) fill the air.

MARY Not as much trouble as we’re in right now. Arm the N.E.R.V.E. guns!

Three very Sci-Fi sounding high pitched noises indicate that the N.E.R.V.E. guns are armed.

MARY You can arrest me later Dorothy but right now I need you to help us capture the Hybrid.

DOROTHY Agreed. Let’s go.

DOROTHY, MARY and JULES exit the kitchen and take cover behind an overturned table. The HYBRID roars and the screams

236 of fleeing diners are everywhere. The HYBRID grabs POOR SUCKER.

POOR SUCKER (ATMOS) No! It’s got me! Let go! Let me… ARRGH!

The HYBRID rips POOR SUCKER into two with a horrific sound.

JULES Urgh. That was unpleasant.

HARRY The Hybrid ripped that poor sucker clean in two!

JULES You say clean but that was very messy.

MARY Dorothy, I need you to open fire on the Hybrid and draw it towards the counter. Jules, you need to flank around the other side of it and on my signal fire the N.E.R.V.E. gun. If we hit it on both sides, we should disable it.

HARRY What about me Doc?

MARY Try and get as many people out of here as you can. If we need a third N.E.R.V.E. gun to bring it down, try to hit it from the rear.

DOROTHY Are you sure this will work?

JULES Either it will go down the first time and we’ve saved the day or it won’t work and the Hybrid will rip you to shreds, meaning no one can testify against us in court. Both methods work for me.

MARY Jules! You really are a complete c…

237

BURSAR (B) Can’t someone save me?

DOROTHY looks up to see that the BURSAR has been cornered by the HYBRID.

DOROTHY The Hybrid has cornered the Bursar! Hey you! Fish sticks!

The HYBRID turns towards DOROTHY and snarls.

DOROTHY Remember me?

MARY Dorothy, you’re meant to be drawing it away from us!

JULES Also, “Fish sticks” is a terrible insult!

DOROTHY You wouldn’t like eating the Bursar. He has no spine! He’s made of jelly! Far too soft for a mighty hunter like you.

BURSAR No spine! Now see here!

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

BURSAR (a long, childish scream)

The BURSAR flees from the cafeteria.

DOROTHY You want a more challenging meal? Come and get it!

DOROTHY fires at the HYBRID. It roars and charges at her.

HARRY It’s coming right at us!

MARY Run!

238

DOROTHY, HARRY, JULES and MARY scramble for safety as the HYBRID clatters into their cover. DOROTHY continues to fire her handgun at the HYBRID as HARRY shouts at the remaining diners.

HARRY Everyone who doesn’t have a gun! Get out of here now!

The diners start to flee. ANNIKA trips and falls to the floor.

HARRY Hey! Be careful everyone! You just pushed that poor woman over!

JULES (sarcastically) Yeah, flee for your lives in an orderly fashion please!

HARRY Are you okay Miss?

ANNIKA (C) No, my ankle hurts. I might have… Harry?

HARRY Oh, hey Annika! Long time, no see.

ANNIKA (under her breath) Not long enough.

HARRY What was that?

ANNIKA Nothing, nothing at all. How have you been?

As HARRY and ANNIKA have this awkward conversation, the sounds of the HYBRID chasing after JULES, MARY and DOROTHY continue in the background.

HARRY Not too bad. You know, work.

As HARRY says “work”, the HYBRID roars and a N.E.R.V.E. gun discharges, crackling as it strikes a wall.

JULES Missed!

239

ANNIKA Keeping you busy, I see.

HARRY Yeah. What about you? Working here now I see?

ANNIKA Yes. I transferred here from floor thirty after… you know.

HARRY Look, Annika. I’m really sorry about that. I was a complete idiot.

ANNIKA Yep. You certainly were.

HARRY I know you’ve been avoiding me since then but I’d really like to make it up to you.

ANNIKA That’s not necessary Harry.

HARRY At least let me buy you a drink sometime, I owe you that much.

ANNIKA All you owe me is leaving me the hell alone! We’re finished! Okay? You’re a sweet guy and we went on a couple of dates but you’re just not my type!

HARRY But I really like you Annika!

ANNIKA Well I like airplanes but that doesn’t mean I’m entitled to fly one! Now please, just leave me alone!

HARRY Fine!

HARRY storms off. ANNIKA is left sat on the floor for a moment before she realises she is still in peril.

240

ANNIKA Harry? Could you still help rescue me? I can’t walk on this ankle.

HARRY Of course.

DOROTHY Harry! Watch out! The Hybrid!

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

HARRY charges his N.E.R.V.E. gun but is smacked to the side by the HYBRID.

HARRY Woah!

ANNIKA Harry!

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

ANNIKA No! No! Stay away! Stay away!

The HYBRID stops and makes sniffing noises.

JULES It’s stopped. What is it doing?

DOROTHY Quickly, while it’s distracted!

MARY Wait! It appears to be smelling that woman. This is most unusual.

DOROTHY It’s moving, Doctor!

JULES It’s heading towards the body of that guy it ripped in two.

MARY I’m going to write all this down. Tell me exactly what it is doing!

241

DOROTHY The hybrid has grabbed a handful of the dead guys… intestines? That’s the long tube bit, right?

MARY Yes, that’s right.

DOROTHY Well it’s grabbed a handful of that, which is really disgusting.

JULES It’s dragging his guts over to that woman.

A truly awful sound of sloppy human innards hitting a tiled floor with a wet thud is heard.

DOROTHY It’s dropped the guts in front of her. He’s nudging them towards her.

MARY This is most bizarre. It almost seems like he is trying to feed her.

DOROTHY But why?

MARY Why does a male in the animal kingdom ever try to feed a female?

DOROTHY Because he wants to… oh my god. Really?

MARY I’m not certain but I suspect this could be the initiation of a mating ritual. The Hybrid is partly human, he might be trying to show her that he is a capable hunter.

JULES And what woman doesn’t want an endless supply of intestines?

DOROTHY We have got to save her!

242

MARY I suspect that right now, if the Hybrid is indeed attempting to court her, she might actually be the safest person in @lantis. If we attempt to take her away, the Hybrid may become violent again.

JULES So what do you suggest? We find her a nice, yellow ball gown and get them to dance together with a singing teapot?

MARY I don’t know Jules. This is an entirely new form of life. We must observe cautiously before we act. The last thing anyone should do right now is attempt to interfere.

Highly armed security officers, led by CHIEF COSTAIN, enter the cafeteria.

COSTAIN (D) Target sighted, officers. Open fire!

The officers open fire. The HYBRID howls and is hit by multiple shots. They cause no damage.

TIMSON (ATMOS) It’s no good Chief! Our bullets are having no effect.

COSTAIN Cease fire!

The officers stop shooting. The HYBRID picks up ANNIKA and climbs onto a table.

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

ANNIKA (screams) Stop! Stop!

COSTAIN It’s picked up that woman!

HARRY Annika!

243

The HYBRID leaps up from the table and into the ventilation shaft it emerged from, taking ANNIKA with it. ANNIKA continues to scream and plead for help as she is abducted.

ANNIKA (screams) Help! Help me! Don’t let it kill me!

ANNIKA’S screams and the sound of the HYBRID crawling through the ventilation shafts fade as it gets away.

COSTAIN Officers, spread out and secure every ventilation access point across this floor!

OFFICERS (ATMOS) Sir!

The OFFICERS march out of the cafeteria.

COSTAIN Timson, initiate lockdown procedures on all of the ventilation systems and get Central to issue a curfew for all non-security personnel to commence immediately.

TIMSON Yes Chief!

TIMSON exits.

COSTAIN The rest of you, my office. Now.

MARY We can’t, Chief Costain. If we don’t track down the Hybrid now…

COSTAIN That was an order Dr. Pote!

JULES (in a mocking, sing-song voice) Somebody’s in trouble!

SCENE ELEVEN – @LANTIS CHIEF OF SECURITY OFFICE, @LANTIS

The voice of the @LANTIS PA is heard through the speakers.

244

@LANTIS PA (VO) Attention citizens of @lantis. A curfew is now in effect. Please return to your living quarters if you wish to continue, you know, living.

CHIEF COSTAIN, THE BURSAR, DOROTHY, MARY, JULES, HARRY and TIMSON are stood inside COSTAIN’S office.

COSTAIN (D) So what you are saying is that you illegally cloned a bulletproof human-fish hybrid killing machine just to see how well it could breathe underwater?

MARY (C) It wasn’t supposed to become a predatory hunter! We had a mix-up of tissue samples that complicated matters. That’s all beside the point now, anyway. We have to focus our attentions on capturing it.

COSTAIN Capture is no longer an option, Dr. Pote. The hybrid must be destroyed. It’s already killed one person and taken another hostage, presumably to feast on her entrails.

MARY I believe you are wrong there, Chief. Before your soldiers barged in with guns-a-blazin’, we observed the Hybrid exhibiting courtship behaviours towards that woman.

HARRY (B) Annika. Her name is Annika.

MARY Whatever she is called, I believe that the Hybrid does not intend to eat or harm her. I suspect he wishes to mate with her instead.

BURSAR (A) (sarcastic) Oh well thank goodness it’s just that! We’ll just leave them to it, shall we?

245

JULES (C) We’re not going to let that happen!

COSTAIN What do you propose to do then? They could be anywhere in @lantis by now. Even if we do find it, we know that our weaponry cannot harm it.

MARY We have the cadavers of the other Hybrids killed by this one. We can analyse their tissue and see if we can find a weakness we can exploit.

DOROTHY (B) Whilst that is happening, I can mount an exploration team to search the ventilation system for the Hybrid.

BURSAR Absolutely not! If you had done your job properly, we wouldn’t be in this mess!

DOROTHY How dare you! I saved your life!

BURSAR Your incompetence is the reason my life was endangered in the first place!

COSTAIN The Bursar is right. Your failure to lock down the Ponderlust labs and subsequent failure to immediately inform central command of the dangerous experiment on the loose are inexcusable.

DOROTHY With all due respect Chief, the situation in those labs was one that I nor any other security officer on this base have been trained or equipped for. I have done my utmost, despite multiple obstructions, to contain the situation to the benefit and satisfaction of the scientific process and the safety of the community of @lantis. 246

COSTAIN You only have a duty towards the people who live here, not their work. You are a security officer and security overrules science.

JULES No it doesn’t.

COSTAIN When you are hired as a security officer, it most certainly does.

JULES Absolutely not. This city, is a refuge for the intellects of the Human race. We live here submerged in the ocean so that the scientific process can not only survive but thrive! Up there, where the people are, it’s a mess. It’s an omnishambles! You know why?

COSTAIN Why?

JULES Because not enough people respected the scientific process! Our ancestors were too busy living in a false utopia that they completely ignored the cancerous tumours slowly growing around their falsified realities. Climate change! Over- population! Dwindling resources! Things that the scientists kept saying we needed to focus on. They were ignored! By people like you, frog-in-the-pot people, who thought other things were more important because they were too stupid or vain to see the bigger picture!

COSTAIN The only picture I am seeing is that a man is dead, a woman has been captured and it is the fault of you and your team! Now you lot are going to stay out of this whilst my team deal with the situation. You are all to return to your laboratory and remain there until the curfew is lifted. 247

BURSAR At which time, your department will be suspended pending further investigations. We will be performing a very thorough examination into your various dangerous projects and should we deem it fit, which I most definitely will see it deemed so, the entirety of Ponderlust labs will be expelled from @lantis permanently.

HARRY No!

MARY You can’t do that!

BURSAR Alas, no. Not me personally. President Shottin has that honour and I will see to it he is informed of all of the facts of your subversive and irresponsible methods!

COSTAIN As for you Officer Goddard, I see no other option but to terminate your contract with us.

DOROTHY But Chief!

COSTAIN I’m sorry but you have failed to keep the peace. As soon as it is safe, you will be sent back to the surface. Timson?

TIMSON (D) Sir?

COSTAIN Escort these four back to the Ponderlust labs and station armed guards outside. They are to remain there until this situation has been rectified.

TIMSON Yes sir.

248

SCENE TWELVE – CENTRAL OFFICE, PONDERLUST LAB

MARY, HARRY, JULES and DOROTHY enter the lab. LUG is stood by MARY’S desk.

LUG (A) Doctor, I have moved the cadavers of the clones into the mortuary, as previously requested.

MARY (C) Thank you Lug.

LUG Forgive my supposition, but you all appear to be ‘gloomy?’

HARRY (A) That’s because we are Lug.

LUG I am improving at my people reading skills. I am ‘not-gloomy’ about this.

JULES (D) Well enjoy it while you can, you big orange dope. Because we’re going be kicked out of here soon, thanks to Mary.

MARY It’s not my fault!

JULES I think you’ll find it is exactly your fault. You’re the one who wanted to breed that monstrosity!

MARY It was an accident! Besides, this is hardly the worst thing we’ve created in here.

LUG Are you referring to me?

MARY No Lug, you’re an absolute godsend.

249

JULES Yeah, a godsend that took the DNA from the wrong fish because no one played ‘Doctors and Nurses’ with it!

MARY It’s still not as bad as creating a miniature Black Hole in the staff kitchen!

JULES I think you’ll find I fixed that problem.

MARY Moving the fridge in front of it doesn’t count as fixing it.

JULES It’ll be fine once it’s evaporated in eighty-seven years or so. Just make sure you don’t put anything on the shelf nearest the event horizon and everything’ll be tickety-boo.

DOROTHY (B) I don’t believe you two! How can you be so self-obsessed at a time like this? That thing is still out there and it’s got a prisoner! We have to help her.

MARY We’re under curfew Dorothy. We’re not allowed to leave this lab. They’ve got armed guards keeping watch over the exits.

DOROTHY What are they going to do if we do leave? Expel us again?

JULES Knowing the Bursar, I’m sure he could find a way to do it.

HARRY Dorothy is right. We have to help Annika.

JULES Why? So you can continue pestering her, you creep! 250

HARRY Hey! That was the first time I’ve seen her since we broke up! I have some unresolved emotional issues that I need to deal with and I don’t appreciate that implication. Besides, what do you know about love? You’re divorced!

JULES At least I got her to the altar!

DOROTHY Just shut up, the pair of you! We have to act quickly or who knows what will happen to Annika.

JULES I think we all have a pretty good idea what will happen-

DOROTHY Mary, any ideas on how to take down the Hybrid?

MARY We can rule out bullets and standard munitions. The N.E.R.V.E. guns seemed to have little to no effect on it either, which is disappointing. I cannot think of any potential weaknesses we can exploit.

JULES Whilst you two don’t find a solution, I’m going to have way too much to drink. Anyone want anything? Lug?

LUG I am eight years old, Professor. Therefore I am technically a minor and not permitted to drink alcoholic beverages.

JULES uncorks a bottle of something potently alcoholic.

JULES Oh yeah, forgot about that. Harry?

HARRY No thanks. I’m allergic.

251

JULES More for me then!

DOROTHY You’re allergic?

HARRY Yeah, I can’t consume alcohol.

DOROTHY Doctor, what about the human element?

MARY Pardon?

DOROTHY In the hybrid. The fish DNA might be resilient but the human DNA is from Harry. Would his allergy have transferred over?

MARY It’s a possibility. If so, the Hybrid might be compromised!

JULES Good old alcohol! Quite literally the solution to our problem! Your terrible DNA might just save our bacon Harry!

HARRY You’re welcome?

MARY Lug, please could you fetch one of the deceased Hybrids and bring them here?

LUG Yes Doctor.

LUG exits the room.

MARY Harry, just how allergic are you to alcohol?

HARRY Pretty bad. If I drink it, I can get stomach cramps and break out in hives. They can be really itchy. 252

MARY Good, skin irritation is good. We can use that. Jules, I’m going to need your vodka.

JULES I didn’t offer you any!

MARY You’re the only member of staff irresponsible enough to keep alcohol inside your desk. It’ll take too long to find another bottle so please, hand it over.

JULES No!

MARY If you don’t give it to me, we lose our jobs and our homes.

JULES This place can rot for all I care!

MARY You’ll also lose access to that faulty vending machine that dispenses free chocolate to Physicists.

JULES Now that is a good point.

MARY If it helps sweeten the deal, I’ll let you use all of our power allowance without complaint for two weeks.

JULES Deal.

JULES hands over the bottle of vodka to MARY as LUG re-enters the room wheeling in a table with the body of a Hybrid on top of it.

MARY Alright everyone, observe as I administer the alcohol to the forearm of the cadaver.

253

MARY pours the vodka onto the arm of the cadaver. A hissing noise can be heard as the skin on the arm begins to blister immediately.

DOROTHY Look! Look, it’s already developing a rash.

MARY Well, that is disgusting. Effective, though. I imagine if this creature were alive, it would be in a great deal of pain.

HARRY My skin doesn’t react like that to alcohol though. Why is it blistering so quickly?

MARY It’s the quantum clay we used to form the epidermis. As it is designed to react speedily to sudden trauma, the cells of the skin regenerate and re- form to the original structure as dictated by the genetic code.

DOROTHY Like when I shot Lug in the face. The bullet just glanced off the skin and the impact area returned to normal seconds later!

MARY Exactly. But observe, the Hybrid’s arm tissue is not recovering into its natural shape.

JULES Well duh. It’s dead.

MARY Yes but the quantum clay material responds automatically via the microscopic circuitry that connects the cells. It doesn’t need the body to be ‘alive’ in order to maintain its shape. However, if the genetic code is dictating that the skin is allergic to alcohol, then the clay cannot heal properly. It is responding to the programming the only way it can, by building an 254 allergic reaction. In this case, hives.

HARRY Which means that the living Hybrid could be incapacitated if we doused it in enough alcohol!

DOROTHY Great! So all we need now is some way to saturate the Hybrid in alcohol.

JULES (snaps fingers) I’ve got it! We build a liquid projectile rifle and super soak that sucker!

HARRY You mean like a water pistol?

JULES Yes, except it’d be a Whisky pistol!

DOROTHY Whisky is no good.

JULES Okay, a Scotch pistol then.

DOROTHY No, they’re too watery. If we are going to get this to work properly, the alcohol needs to stick to the Hybrid’s skin.

MARY Yes, prolonged exposure of the alcohol to the skin will more effectively incapacitate it. We need a liqueur.

JULES Okay. Harry and I will quickly build a couple of rifles. Dorothy and Mary, you two work on a recipe to for creme de napalm.

LUG What shall I do Professor?

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DOROTHY I have an idea. Lug, I think it’s about time you upgraded from ‘Knock Knock’ jokes to ‘Knock Door Run.’

SCENE THIRTEEN – ELEVATOR CORRIDOR, PONDERLUST LAB

Two GUARDS stand by the doors to the Ponderlust Labs. They are bored.

Guard #2 (C) (makes tuneless bored noises by puffing out cheeks) Just a couple of guards… guarding a door. (makes more tuneless bored noises by puffing out cheeks) Guarding, guarding, guarding the door… (makes even more tuneless bored noises by puffing out cheeks)

Guard #1 (B) John?

Guard #2 Yes Karen?

Guard #1 Stop doing that.

Guard #2 But I’m bored!

Guard #1 That’s nice. Now shut it.

Guard #2 Why aren’t we hunting for that vicious creature with the others?

Guard #1 Because it’s our lucky day, John. You’ve not been a guard long enough to realise it but the boring jobs are the best jobs.

Guard #2 I fail to see how.

Guard #1 Right now, you and I are standing here in this corridor. It’s quiet, the temperature is agreeable and all we have to do is make sure a door that is locked stays shut. Meanwhile 256

our colleagues are crawling through dirty, hot, cramped ventilation shafts where the best thing that can happen to them is that they don’t get their face ripped off by a horrific monster. We all get paid the same, so I’d much rather earn my wage just standing in silence by a door, thank you very much.

After a short silence, GUARD #2 starts making tuneless bored noises again.

Guard #1 Oh for goodness sake!

Two loud thuds are heard hitting the door behind the GUARDS. They turn and arm their rifles.

Guard #2 What was that?

Guard #1 I don’t know!

Guard #2 Who’s there?

LUG (A) Interrupting cow.

Guard #1 What?

Guard #2 Interrupting cow wh-

The Ponderlust lab doors crash open as LUG shoulder charges through them. The GUARDS stagger back. LUG draws themselves up to full height.

LUG Moo.

The GUARDS open fire on LUG. They stop when they see the bullets are having no effect.

Guard #1 The damn thing is invincible!

Guard #2 What do we do?

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LUG starts to stamp their feet.

LUG Moooooooooooooooo!

Guard #1 Retreat!

The GUARDS flee as they are pursued by LUG. DOROTHY, MARY, JULES and HARRY emerge with three Alcohol Rifles.

DOROTHY (D) Alright, the corridor is clear. Move out to the elevator.

MARY (B) The Hybrid will almost certainly be looking for somewhere to build a nest. My examination of the other Hybrid bodies suggest that its vision is poor, so it will rely on scent and thermal detection. I would suggest visiting the boiler room in the @lantis Energy Facilities on Floor thirty-seven. A large number of the vents converge there, so chances are it will be attracted by the heat emanating from the boilers.

HARRY (A) This thing uses smells to see?

MARY No Harry, it uses smells to smell. It’s not blind, although a combination of your poor eyesight and the lack of depth perception and slow iris movement in Siamese Fighting Fish means that it relies on other senses.

DOROTHY How do these alcohol guns work?

JULES (C) Just like a run of the mill flame thrower. Except instead of liquid napalm, these bad boys fire off streams of booze so sickly sweet you’ll probably become diabetic just looking at it. Also they’re not called ‘Alcohol guns.’ They’re called ‘Boozis.’ 258

DOROTHY Boozis?

JULES Yeah, like an Uzi but with booze. I was tempted to go with ‘Snifter Rifles’ but that would be if we were firing shots. Geddit? Shots? Ha ha!

DOROTHY I got it.

JULES If they fired missiles, they’d be a ‘Beer-zooka.’ Or how about we just call them ‘Muskets?’ Ha?

DOROTHY Oh look, we’re at the lift. Time for Harry and I to go.

MARY Remember to contact us on the private phonar frequency when you locate the Hybrid, Annika or any potential nests.

DOROTHY Sure thing Doctor. Anything else?

MARY Aim for the limbs. If we can stop it from fleeing or causing harm to others, we might be able to prevent it from being needlessly slaughtered without undergoing some tests.

DOROTHY It’s too late for that now. I’ve got to take it out to put this mess right. There’s no time to see if it can breathe underwater.

HARRY Yeah, the only thing the Hybrid might possible drown on is my thick and sticky liquid!

There is a very awkward silence.

HARRY By which I mean the alcohol.

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MARY/DOROTHY/JULES Yeah, of course./We knew what you meant./Definitely did not misconstrue that as anything sexual.

The elevator doors close, taking DOROTHY and HARRY down to the boiler room.

MARY Jules, why do you have a Boozi if you are not going down with them to the boiler room?

JULES Ah you know… it’s just an extra security measure in case the Hybrid comes back to the lab.

MARY You’re just going to use it on yourself, aren’t you?

JULES Yep pretty much.

JULES turns the Boozi on himself and fires. After the sound of alcohol splashing into his face, we hear JULES take a big gulp and make the noise someone makes after taking in a large amount of liquid. That “Ah!” noise.

JULES Boom! Headshot!

SCENE FOURTEEN – BOILER ROOMS, FLOOR THIRTY-SEVEN

The elevator opens on Floor Thirty-Seven. DOROTHY and HARRY exit.

ELEVATOR (VO) Floor thirty-seven, @lantis Energy Facilities.

DOROTHY (B) Okay Harry, stay close to me.

HARRY (C) It’s very dark down here.

DOROTHY It’s part of the curfew protocols. The lights are dimmed in public areas and thoroughfares once a curfew is in effect to encourage 260 people to return to their domestic quarters.

HARRY Oh, that’s sneaky!

DOROTHY When you’re trying to keep a small underwater city full of academics under control, it helps to have a few clever ideas up your sleeve. It’s a bit warm down here, isn’t it?

HARRY Yeah, I like it. I used to bring Annika down here on dates when we were together.

DOROTHY Really?

HARRY Yeah.

DOROTHY You brought her to the boiler rooms on dates?

HARRY Of course.

DOROTHY Why?

HARRY Well, there’s not a whole lot to do in @lantis that’s that interesting.

DOROTHY I think you can do much better than a trip down to the boiler room!

HARRY I happen to like it down here. At least, when it’s well-lit and I’m not hunting for monsters.

DOROTHY Did Annika enjoy these visits too?

HARRY She… actually she never said.

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DOROTHY I wonder why.

HARRY It was her suggestion in the first place, so she must have liked it!

DOROTHY She wanted to come down here?

HARRY I think so. We’d been going out for a little while and things were going well. One day, she said she wanted to have a steamy getaway. So I brought her down here, because of-

BOTH -the steam.

DOROTHY Oh Harry, you sweet summer child.

HARRY She seemed to grow quite distant towards me after the first couple of trips. One day she just stopped turning up. I tried to speak to her but she started working at the top end of the base and… well I just didn’t have time to go see her, what with running around after the Doc and the Prof. I need to see her again, so I can tell her that-

In the distance, the groans of ANNIKA can be heard.

DOROTHY That sounds like it might be Annika! Follow me, Boozis on standby.

DOROTHY and HARRY enter a boiler room to see ANNIKA curled up on the floor in a rudimentary nest made out of old boiler suits. The HYBRID is nowhere to be seen.

HARRY (whispered) There she is! Lying on that pile of boiler suits!

DOROTHY The Hybrid must be using them as a makeshift nest.

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HARRY I don’t see any sign of the Hybrid.

DOROTHY Neither do I.

HARRY It might be somewhere else, hunting for food.

DOROTHY It’s a possibility. Go check on her but proceed with caution. I’ll contact the others.

HARRY carefully makes his way over to ANNIKA. DOROTHY pulls out her radio.

DOROTHY Mother Goose, this is Canary One. Do you read me? Over.

MARY (A) We read you Canary One. What is your situation? Over.

DOROTHY We have located the Golden Egg in Boiler Room… 14-G. No sign of the Turducken. Over.

MARY The target is probably not far away. If it does appear, see if you can lock it inside the room and get yourselves out of there. Proceed with extreme caution. Over.

DOROTHY Understood Mother Goose. Over and-

HYBRID (ATMOS) (a horrific gurgling growl)

The HYBRID is standing directly behind HARRY, who is down on his knees next to ANNIKA.

DOROTHY Harry, watch out!

Before HARRY can react, the HYBRID smacks him aside with one swing of his arm. HARRY cries out as he is flung to the

263 opposite side of the boiler room, hitting the boiler with a massively reverberating clang. The HYBRID approaches ANNIKA.

ANNIKA (D) No! Stay away from me! You beast!

DOROTHY Hey!

The HYBRID turns to face DOROTHY, making an inquisitive sound as it does. DOROTHY takes four steps forwards and cocks her Boozi.

DOROTHY Get away from her, you bitch!

The HYBRID roars and charges towards DOROTHY. DOROTHY opens fire with her Boozi. A stream of sticky alcohol hits the HYBRID which roars in pain.

DOROTHY Harry, get up!

HARRY Ooow! My head!

The HYBRID charges towards DOROTHY again. This time she narrowly avoids being tackled. The HYBRID crashes into the wall behind her. Alarms sound as the heavy metal door of Boiler Room 14-G closes shut, locking everyone inside.

DOROTHY What’s that noise?

HARRY It’s the door! They automatically lock when there is an electrical fault or a pressure overload in one of the boilers! I must have damaged this boiler when I was thrown into it.

The HYBRID slowly gets back to its feet.

DOROTHY What do we do?

HARRY I have to let water out of the boiler or the pressure build up will cause an explosion, killing us all.

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DOROTHY Where will the water flood out?

HARRY Into this room.

DOROTHY But we’ll drown!

HARRY There is an escape hatch, up in the ceiling. Once I open up the valve, we have about a minute to climb that ladder and exit the chamber before it is flooded.

DOROTHY This seems like a poorly designed system. It’s definitely a breach of health and safety regulations!

HARRY It’s an incentive to us engineers to make sure that the boilers don’t malfunction, I guess.

HYBRID (a horrific gurgling growl)

DOROTHY The Hybrid is back on its feet! Turn that valve, get Annika and climb up that ladder now!

HARRY But Dorothy!

DOROTHY I’ll follow once you two are clear. Now throw me your Boozi!

HARRY throws the Boozi to DOROTHY, who catches it.

DOROTHY Move it!

HARRY turns the valve on the boiler. Water begins gushing out into the boiler room. HARRY sprints over to ANNIKA.

HARRY Come on Annika. We’ve got to move!

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DOROTHY Hey, ugly!

HYBRID (a horrific yet curious gurgling growl)

DOROTHY Last orders!

DOROTHY fires on the HYBRID with both Boozis. The HYBRID shrieks in pain and staggers away, banging into the boiler. HARRY and ANNIKA climb the ladder.

ANNIKA I don’t feel so good.

HARRY Keep climbing!

DOROTHY This drink is on me!

DOROTHY fires on the HYBRID again. The HYBRID howls.

DOROTHY Actually, the drinks are on you! That’s not as funny though. Ignore that last quip! Ooo! Harry, this water is a bit hot. I can feel it through my boots!

HARRY The water is close to boiling point! If you stay down there too long, it will boil you alive!

DOROTHY You never told me that!

HARRY It’s water from a boiler! I didn’t think I’d have to say that. I thought you might already know that a boiler has a tendency to boil things!

DOROTHY Get that hatch open! I’m dropping the Boozis and coming up!

DOROTHY drops the Boozis and climbs onto the ladder. The HYBRID, no longer being fired upon, gives chase. It climbs the ladder too. HARRY and ANNIKA reach the top. 266

ANNIKA That thing is following us! It’s climbing the ladder!

HARRY Hurry Dorothy!

THE HYBRID grabs DOROTHY’S left leg.

DOROTHY It’s got me by the leg! Help!

The hatch above the ladder starts to open.

ANNIKA The hatch is opening by itself!

The hatch opens fully and JULES leans down with his Boozi aimed at the HYBRID.

HARRY It’s the Professor and the Doc!

JULES (A) Looks like you guys need a hand. Hey Hybrid, last orders!

DOROTHY I already said that one!

JULES Do you want me to save your life or not?

DOROTHY I’m just saying!

JULES Whatever.

JULES fires the Boozi and hits the HYBRID in the head. It screams as it falls with a splash into the water. HARRY, ANNIKA and DOROTHY climb through the hatch.

HARRY Doctor, why on Earth are you up here?

MARY We heard the Hybrid attack you over the phonar. We climbed down here to offer some additional aerial support.

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JULES I see why you do this security gig Dotty, it’s a hoot!

DOROTHY It’s not always like this and my name is Dorothy. Call me Dotty again and you die.

The HYBRID roars as it starts climbing the ladder again.

ANNIKA It’s still alive!

JULES Not for long. Say hello to my little friend!

JULES throws a bomb down through the hatch.

DOROTHY Close that hatch!

HARRY Is that a grenade?

MARY Actually it’s a bomb.

JULES and DOROTHY close the hatch. An explosion is heard.

JULES A Jagerbomb! The combination of the sticky alcohol with the shrapnel from the device will have embedded itself in the Hybrid’s skin. With any luck, by the time the room below us is drained, they’ll be one very dead fish-man-thing.

ANNIKA Thank you. You saved my- oh!

ANNIKA faints.

JULES Well that’s gratitude for you! I save her life and she falls asleep on me.

MARY She’s fainted. She needs urgent medical attention. 268

DOROTHY You three carry her out of here and get her to the infirmary. I’m going to contact Central and let them know what’s happened.

HARRY But Dorothy, they’ll absolutely throw the book at you for this!

DOROTHY Too bad. As the Chief said, security overrules everything else when you’re an officer. I needed to keep everyone else safe. Now move out!

SCENE FIFTEEN – THE INFIRMARY, @LANTIS.

MARY enters the waiting room that contains HARRY, JULES, LUG and DOROTHY.

MARY (A) I have just spoken to the nurses. Annika looks as though she’ll have no long-lasting physical trauma from the incident. They’re going to monitor her for a few days first though. The poor dear is in shock.

HARRY (C) When will she be taking visitors?

MARY About that Harry. I’ve been told that you are not to visit her under any circumstances whilst she is in recovery.

HARRY Why?

MARY When she regained consciousness, Annika was delirious. Apparently when the Hybrid took her to the boiler room, it seemed to put her into some sort of trance.

DOROTHY (B) A trance? Like, it hypnotised her?

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MARY We’re not sure. Her memory post abduction is hazy but she distinctly recalls the Hybrid performing a sort of “Sexy dance.” It unveiled it’s fins and waltzed around the room for a while.

HARRY How bizarre.

MARY Betta Splendens males are known to perform dance-like manoeuvres in territorial displays but quite why the Hybrid was acting in this manner is uncertain.

HARRY So I can’t go see Annika because the Hybrid did a dance?

MARY No, it’s what she remembers it doing next. Apparently it spent a great deal of time forcing her to examine the intricacies of the boiler room.

DOROTHY Really?

MARY We can’t know for certain, there are no security cameras down there. That is what she remembers though. The Hybrid pointing at different pipes and valves whilst making little “fascinated” noises. I believe that she may well have hallucinated that particular experience.

JULES (D) Are you sure? The Hybrid was half- Harry, after all.

MARY That could have been a factor. I believe that whatever happened to put her into a trance-like state has merged her memories of you with the Hybrid. It could be due to you both sharing DNA or the fact she was taken to the boiler room she associated 270

you with or any other number of factors. The point being, Annika has formed a mental link between you and the Hybrid and in her delicate mental state, it would be best if you avoided seeing each other for some time.

HARRY Oh. Okay then. I’ll… I’m going to go back to the lab. Get our things packed.

LUG (A) I shall assist you, Senior Technician.

HARRY No thanks Lug. I’ll do this on my own.

HARRY leaves the room.

LUG Senior Technician Harry appears to be double gloomy.

MARY Yes, poor lamb.

DOROTHY I suppose I had better go pack too. The subs to the surface will be running by the morning.

MARY Now you just wait right there Dorothy. I’m sure we can find some way of keeping you here.

DOROTHY I doubt it. You heard what Chief Costain and the Bursar said. I’ve already been fired.

JULES Speak of the devils.

CHIEF COSTAIN and THE BURSAR enter the waiting room.

CHIEF (C) Officer Goddard.

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DOROTHY Sir.

BURSAR (C) Well, well, well. You’ve certainly done it now! One boiler room flooded, equipment damaged beyond repair and the illegal use on non- issue firearms! You lot are in the doo-doo!

JULES I think you’ll find that we weren’t responsible for that dodgy old boiler blowing its lid. In fact, if it weren’t for the actions of Officer Goddard and Harry that thing would have exploded and taken out a chunk of @lantis with it!

BURSAR Whether or not that is the case Professor Quine, you’re still carrying an unlicensed firearm around in a public area! Naughty, Naughty!

JULES fires his Boozi at THE BURSAR, soaking him in alcohol and knocking him to the floor.

JULES Oops. Finger slipped.

BURSAR You idiot! You’ve soaked me in… chartreuse!

JULES It’s actually a combination of Drambuie, Irish Cream and a strawberry liqueur. It’s a new cocktail I’ve concocted that has to be distributed via a high propulsion pressurised fluid server. This isn’t a firearm, although I can see how an imbicile might make that mistake. It’s a cocktail shaker, built by a Physicist.

CHIEF You’ll get your chance to make up whatever lies you want at your hearing. I thought you might like to 272

know that the Hybrid is definitely dead.

DOROTHY Good.

CHIEF It was covered in blisters and had shrapnel embedded in it’s chest and limbs. However, our initial field autopsy report found that those injuries did not ultimately kill it.

MARY How did it die then?

CHIEF It drowned.

DOROTHY It drowned?

MARY Well, that’s embarrassing.

CHIEF We were very lucky that it didn’t injure or kill any more people than it did. Whilst your irresponsible actions are unforgiveable, I must commend you Officer Goddard. Your bravery and ingenuity proved valuable in this scenario.

DOROTHY Thank you sir. I could not have done it without the Ponderlust team though. I understand that I am to lose my position but if I may present any evidence or character references to their upcoming hearing, I would like to do so.

BURSAR We don’t need the testimony of some reckless ex-employee! You are leaving @lantis at the first possible-

TIMSON and PRESIDENT SHOTTIN enter the waiting room.

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TIMSON (D) Presenting the President and founder of the city of @lantis, Mr. Benjamin Shottin!

SHOTTIN (B) At ease everyone. At ease. I came back to the city as soon as I heard. I understand the threat has been dealt with, yes?

CHIEF It perished in the boiler rooms, due in part of the actions of the Ponderlust Laboratory team and Officer Goddard.

BURSAR Although it should be said that-

SHOTTIN Did I ask for you to say anything, Snidal?

BURSAR No sir.

SHOTTIN Then don’t. (To DOROTHY) You’re Officer Goddard?

DOROTHY Yes Mr. President. (salutes)

SHOTTIN Good work. We could do with more officers like you! (To Costain) I presume you have already held her promotion ceremony, Chief Costain?

CHIEF Promotion ceremony? No, no we have not, Sir.

SHOTTIN Well then, get to it! This young girl is obviously Captain material! She’s clearly got what it takes to lead in a responsible and safe fashion.

BURSAR But Sir…

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SHOTTIN Silence Snidal!

CHIEF We will hold the ceremony tonight sir, in the Mess Hall. You’re welcome to join us.

SHOTTIN Of course I’m welcome to join you, I built this bloody place myself! Don’t forget that or you’ll be hosting any future ceremonies in a diving suit outside of my city!

CHIEF Yes Mr. President. (salutes)

SHOTTIN You there, scientists.

MARY Yes sir.

SHOTTIN You have done a great service for @lantis today. As such, I shall personally see to it that your budget is doubled!

JULES Yes!

MARY Thank you very much sir!

BURSAR Mr. President! You cannot do that! These people, these frauds, they are the ones responsible for-

SHOTTIN Mr. Snidal! I am quite aware of what happened here today! You were very thorough in your reports. Whilst it was unfortunate what took place, this is exactly why I built @lantis in the first place. This beautiful megastructure is not designed to protect us from the outside world. It is designed to protect the outside world from us! This city, filled with intellectuals and 275

thinkers, inventors and tinkerers, is the razor sharp precipice of human endeavour! Occasionally, you get a nasty cut. That’s the risk. And I encourage that risk, I welcome it. For without taking risks, we are no better than those people on the surface that try to keep everything the same. If we do that, we will stagnate and fail as a species. I will not allow that to happen on my watch! Now, see to it that Ponderlust labs have their funding doubled!

BURSAR Sir!

SHOTTIN Also, (sniffs) you stink of booze! Drinking on the job is no way for a Bursar to behave!

BURSAR Sir! I didn’t! It was-

SHOTTIN Enough excuses! Fix their budget and book yourself into a clinic to dry yourself out! (turns to DOROTHY, JULES and MARY.) Thank you once again for saving the city. Next time though, maybe increase your security measures.

MARY Of course sir.

SHOTTIN Costain, Snidal, come along then. I have other matters to discuss with you.

CHIEF Of course, sir.

TIMSON, CHIEF COSTAIN, THE BURSAR and PRESIDENT SHOTTIN exit the waiting room.

DOROTHY What just happened?

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LUG President Shottin arrived to discuss recent events and promoted you to the position of Captain, in recognition and celebration of-

JULES She knows what happened, you big dope.

MARY It looks like you’ll be hanging around with us for a bit longer then. Unless you choose to move to another area of the base.

DOROTHY No, I think I’ll stay where I am. Heavens knows, you lot need the help.

JULES I still say we’d be fine without you. But it looks as though we’re stuck with you. I’d better go hide the rest of my potentially incriminating activities and equipment just in case you “accidentally” find them. Here Lug, take the Boozi.

LUG Yes Professor.

JULES hands the Boozi over to LUG and exits the room.

MARY Don’t mind Jules. If he actually minded you being a frequent visitor, he’d be sure to let us know.

DOROTHY Do you need any help from me down in the Lab?

MARY No. I’ll go tell Harry the good news. You get some rest and we’ll see you tomorrow, Captain!

MARY exits the room. LUG Knock Knock.

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DOROTHY Who’s there?

LUG Payback.

DOROTHY Payback who?

LUG fires the Boozi and hits DOROTHY in the face with a stream of sticky, sweet booze.

DOROTHY That wasn’t very nice Lug! You shot me in the face! Why did you do that?

LUG I believe I have finally grasped the concept of the punchline, Captain.

THE END

THEME TUNE PLAYS

ANNOUNCER You have been listening to @lantis! Written and directed by Stephen B. Platt. Starring Nicola Brescianini as Captain Dorothy Goddard, Murray Jackson as Professor Jules Quine, Tegan Mulvany as Doctor Mary Pote, Max Rankin as Senior Technician Harry Kinvig, and Nic Doig as Deputy Technician Lug.

Also featuring the voices of Kate Willoughby, Rhys Hyatt, Ella Ewart, James Jury, Ron Arthurs, and Vee McGuire.

Foley work was performed by Andrew David with announcements read by Nic Doig. The theme tune was composed by Robert Woods. This episode was performed, recorded and broadcast from the Nexus Theatre on Murdoch University’s South Street campus in Perth, Western Australia.

This programme was brought to you by Thought Jar Productions in association with Murdoch University. For more information about this 278 series and where to download other episodes, please visit thoughtjarproductions.com

Be sure to tune in next week for more adventures from @lantis! Thank you for listening.

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Appendices – Reviews for @lantis

Here follows a collection of four reviews the @lantis project received from Western Australian reviewers in 2018:

‘ATLANTIS’ – (@lantis) – ‘Data Protection’ reviewed by Gordon the Optom for the Independent Theatre Association, August 30, 2018. Accessed from https://www.ita.org.au/2018/08/atlantis-lantis-data-protection-reviewed-by-gordon- the-optom/

‘ATLANTIS’ – (@lantis) – with ‘Data Protection’ being the second one-hour, science fiction radio play in a series of seven episodes. These exciting and fun plays, which are suitable for even young teenagers, have been written by accomplished actor, Stephen B. Platt, co-founder of Thought Jar Productions and host of ‘The Cinema Catch- Up Club Podcast’. Recently, Stephen has mainly turned his hand to writing and directing, winning awards on the way. This series of plays are part of Stephen’s PhD, doctoral thesis research, as he examines ‘Science Fiction in Live Performance’. In 1953, when few people in the UK had even travelled on a domestic plane trip, and sputniks were still some time away, the BBC brought out a radio series by Charles Chilton, called ‘Journey into Space’ which was set only 12 years ahead. This 12 part series – for the ‘wireless’ – soon turned into 72 episodes, and lasted for 5 years. The whole family tuned in. For many of us, this was the first time we had heard the word computer or air-lock door. The magic of radio is that it allows the mind of the listener to go where it wants to, so that a family of five would ‘hear and experience’ 5 different versions of the episode, each to their own. This show introduced actors including David Jacobs who went on to chair one of Britain’s best loved, weekly programmes, ‘Juke Box Jury’ 8 years. Each of the recordings is performed live on stage, for a couple of nights every week at 7.00 pm in the Nexus Theatre, Murdoch University from August 21st to October 4th. Check the nights as they vary slightly. Each episode is then released online in an audio only format. The scene: a modern day radio studio, with the play being based on an underwater city, about a decade into the future.

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The set was designed by John King and assistant Harrison Mitchell: Front of stage are 4 mic-stands, each holding a C40 microphone and windsock. At the rear of the stage to the right, is an effects microphone for ‘human sounds’, whilst on the other side is a complete sound effects desk (Foley artists Andrew David and Cassie Power) with sound recordings by Bradley Clarke. The scientific theme of a colourful benzene ring pattern was carried over the walls, floor mats and sound effects desk. There is a semicircle of chairs around the stage for performers awaiting their lines. Set Assistants are James Jury and Ella Ewart. Stage management is by Sarah Courtis and her assistant SM Anne-Marie ‘Mia’ Winter. Incidentally, the BBC used the term ‘Floor’ Manager rather than ‘Stage’ manager for all of their TV shows, and I think radio as well (but not sure) – yes, I am a pedant. As the opening original theme tune by Robert Woods plays, a large screen fills the rear wall, displaying the Atlantis water theme and logo, and during the recording (indicated by a large red ‘ON AIR’ sign in the auditorium), a series of fine quality artistic representations of the submarine craft and crew are displayed (Artist Ally Snell, made into AV by Ella Ewart and operated by Harrison Mitchell). The very good mood lighting was designed by Zenna Newman-Santos. Although this is a radio play, the actors are in costume (Róisín Keiley). Many are in black leotards, but the lead actors have lab coats, or other appropriate clothing.

In the mysterious Ponderlust Laboratories, the newly-appointed Captain Dorothy Goddard (Nicola Brescianini) is talking to part of her team; the crotchety Professor Jules Quine (Murray Jackson), who, as his surname suggests is a brilliant logician and scientist. Then there is Dr Mary Pote (Tegan Mulvany) the resident biologist, who varies between being a good friend and a frightening adversary to Jules. Jules gave ‘birth’ to the sassy Artificial Intelligence IRIS (Xarna Rappold) a super- brained computer, capable of completing numerous tasks at once, but unfortunately with the attitude of a fourteen year old girl. Her skills began to suffer when distracted by a young man, wimpy Percy (Jacob Wehr-Murphy) and his sidekick Izzy (Susanna Gray). The adventures in Ponderlust continue when IRIS tries to take over, by ruining the futures of Chief Costain (Kate Willoughby) and a student scientist (Ellin Sears). Can the nerdy and caring Chief Engineer of the Labs, Harry Kinvig (Max Rankin) save the day? Harry is attached at the hip to Deputy Technician, Lug (Nic Doig) a gentle 282 giant with a heart of gold. Perhaps the Elevator and @lantis PA (Vee McGuire) can intervene and help.

Actors from other episodes include Rhys Hyatt as The Bursar, Patrick Downes as Alan Gawne, Jeff Watkins as Dr Roland Templeton, Hannah Gibson as Eleanor Marley, Ron Arthurs as President Benjamin Shottin, and Willy Smeets as Mr Drake. The Ensemble included: Stuart Hayward, James Jury, Chris Buckle, Jason Dohle, Dean Lovatt and Luke Gratton.

Stephen has cleverly added numerous lines of dry humour to his script, with comments such as ‘cannot walk and think at the same time’, a direct link to the reputation of US President Gerald Ford. He chose ‘Dorothy’, the hero from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as his, along with an in reference to ‘the friends of Dorothy’. The script is rich, the action fast moving, and the actors superb. Stephen wisely avoided making the convincing dialogue too technical, allowing a whole family to enjoy the stories. There were nice technical touches, such as the echo / reverb on the voice of IRIS. For a short passage of the play I closed my eyes to sample the experience as a radio listener at home. The differences in the cast’s voices were markedly different; some were high pitched, some grumpy, other sounded mentally vague, and so it was easy to recognise the characters. Was Max acting or is his accent really an upper-class, mid-Scotland accent? Very good. Stephen had obviously constructed each character in detail before putting pen to paper, but it may help the listener a little if each actor mentions the names of the other characters in the scene, to whom they are speaking, a touch more, as without seeing the cast names tend to get lost. At the end of the play the audience were more than enthusiastic at the quality they had seen, and deservedly gave a good strong applause, however it made the presenter’s final cast call difficult to hear. It might be advisable to use the floor (stage) manager to control the audience applause until the end of the credits (?) The show was beautifully written to the radio time slot of 1 hour without a need to edit, very difficult to achieve. It is a credit to the writer / director (Stephen B. Platt) that such a large, well- known and talented cast have given their time to his presentation 283

One quality show would be a difficult task to produce, but a series of seven episodes is more than admirable. Many congratulations and ‘Chookas’ to all concerned.

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[Review] @lantis reviewed by Thomas Wendt for Metior Magazine, September 10, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.metior.com.au/arts-theatre/review-lantis

In my short time here at Murdoch, I have participated in a few different forms of theatre; an educational piece, a comedic piece, and a science fiction piece. By far the most difficult of them was the science fiction piece; it was a right pain to organise. So it makes me very happy whenever a sci-fi theatre piece is done well, and @lantis does sci- fi very well. Written and directed by Stephen B. Platt, @lantis is the story of an underwater city of the same name, populated by scientists who are experts in their fields. Security Officer Dorothy (Nicola Brescianini) is sent to work in the strange and wonderful Ponderlust Laboratories, run by Professor Jules (Murray Jackson) and Doctor Mary (Tegan Mulvany), with the help of Technical Officer Harry (Max Rankin) and Lug (Nic Doig), a living experiment. Each episode is accompanied by live foley by Andrew David and Cassie Power, with lighting by Zenna Newman-Santos, and sound and AV by Ella Ewart. @lantis is a radio play in seven parts, with a new episode each week. Each episode has its own supporting cast and theme. Episode 1, titled Fish Out of Water, was accompanied by Kate Willoughby, Rhys Hyatt, James Jury, Ella Ewart, and Ron Arthurs, and was in the style of the classic ‘monster of the week’. In this episode, Doctor Mary creates a new form of life, combining a Siamese Fighting Fish and an engineer. But what would happen if it escaped? Episode 2, titled Data Protection, introduced IRIS, the A.I. daughter of Professor Jules (Xarna Rappold), and was accompanied by Jacob Wehr-Murphy, Susanna Gray, Chris Buckle, Kate Willoughby, and Ellin Sears. It was very much in the style of the ‘rogue artificial intelligence’. In this episode, Dorothy meets IRIS, a sassy teenaged Artificial Intelligence created by Professor Jules to help them in Ponderlust Laboratories. IRIS might be a super computer, but when she gets distracted by a boy, she develops some bad habits. This form of serialized theatre is very difficult to pull off and needs clever characters and creative storylines to keep an audience hooked for episode after episode. Luckily, @lantis pulls this off in the best possible way. It has engaging characters that pull you into fantastic and clever writing to keep you engaged with the story. I 285 particularly liked the portrayal of the Bursar by Rhys Hyatt in Episode one, it takes a lot for a fictional character to make me actually mad, and he played it wonderfully. Episode two contained one of my favourite lines ever, “Just because I’m omni-present, doesn’t mean I omni-care”. I am excited to see how this show progresses and see the characters develop in the future. If you would like to find out more information, listen to past episodes, or get tickets to future episodes, visit atlantisradioplay.com 8/10.

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@lantis Episode Four A Dark World by Thought Jar Productions reviewed by Lee-Ann Khoh for Perth Walkabout, September 14th, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.perthwalkabout.com/arts-culture/atlantis-episode-four-a-dark-world-by- thought-jar-productions

I didn’t know what to expect when I headed to Nexus Theatre to check out @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play – more specifically, Episode 4 of a seven-part series, having not seen the previous instalments. The series was written and directed by Stephen B. Platt as part of his PhD research into science fiction and live performance. In keeping with the futuristic theme, programs were not available in print but could be accessed by scanning a QR code. @lantis is set in the future at an underwater city and research facility (also named @lantis). In Episode 4: A Dark World, two botanists from @lantis go missing and the quirky team at Ponderlust Laboratory – security officer Dorothy (played by Nicola Brescianini), biologist Mary (Tegan Mulvany), physicist Jules (Murray Jackson), engineer Harry (Max Rankin), and hulking lab creation Lug (Nic Doig) – are sent to the surface to investigate. Mary and Jules have been in the controlled environment of @lantis so long that dealing with the elements disgusts them, while Lug exhibits an adorable sense of wonder at experiencing sunlight for the first time. Dorothy and Lug leave the others to follow some tracks in the hope of finding the missing botanists. Before long, each member of the separated team finds themselves at the mercy of two unexpected factions. Episode 4 forms one half of a two-part episode and ends on a cliffhanger, to be continued in Episode 5. Though billed as a radio play, the stage evoked a sense of the unknown lurking in the shadows and scene changes were depicted on a screen. We were also able to see how various sound effects – such as the crunching of footsteps through the jungle – were created in real time. Each character had a distinct personality and voice, which made the episode much easier to follow even though I was dropping in halfway through the series. And despite the sci-fi setting, @lantis also worked well as a comedy at times. I’m looking forward to seeing Episode 5 next week.

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@lantis The Year of the Long Tail by Thought Jar Productions reviewed by Lee-Ann Khoh for Perth Walkabout, September 22nd, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.perthwalkabout.com/arts-culture/alantis-episode-five-the-year-of-the- long-tail-by-thought-jar-productions

Following my first taste of @lantis: A Science Fiction Radio Play last week, I returned to Nexus Theatre for the second half of a double episode. After a recap of the previous week, Episode 5: The Year of the Long Tail continued where Episode 4: A Dark World left off. Mary (played by Tegan Mulvany), Jules (Murray Jackson), and Harry (Max Rankin) have been captured by the Rattus Sapiens, a community of intelligent human-sized rats. Harry is seemingly dead, Jules is facing the prospect of becoming a human guinea pig, and Mary’s life depends on her ability to cure a gravely ill child. Meanwhile, Dorothy (Nicola Brescianini), Lug (Nic Doig), and their new companion James (Dean Lovatt) – freed from a cryogenics chamber in Episode 4 – are being held by an army of evolved furry mammals known as the Resistance, who are at war with the Rattus Sapiens. The Resistance is led by Paula (Xarna Rappold, who also plays sassy supercomputer IRIS), a human who was cryogenically frozen with James in the 21st century – as was the Rattus Sapiens’ mysterious leader. The Ponderlust Laboratory team must draw on their expertise to get back to @lantis alive, with entertaining results. The Year of the Long Tail contained more exposition and technobabble than the previous episode, but it wasn’t too difficult to follow if you’d seen or listened to A Dark World. (I wouldn’t recommend checking out Episode 5 before Episode 4). The cryogenically frozen characters originally appeared in another Thought Jar Productions show, Thaw, which I didn’t see, but it would have been a nice touch for those who did. Something I neglected to mention in my review of A Dark World was Rob Woods’ rousing theme tune, which reminded me of the epic Jerry Goldsmith-composed theme first heard on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. However, while Star Trek tune was written for a terrible movie (and thankfully revived on a far superior TV series), both instalments I’ve seen of @lantis have been worthy of its music.

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Bibliography & References

Academic Readings

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290

Articles, Magazines, and Reviews

• Adams, S. 2008. New Hitchhiker's book seven years after death of Douglas Adams. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2971637/Sixth- Hitchhikers-Guide-to-be-published.html Date Accessed: 17/11/2019 • Billington, M. 2011. “Frankenstein” review. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/feb/24/review-frankenstein-olivier- theatre-boyle Date Accessed: 29/11/2018 • Brantley, B. 2006. In Robot World She Turns More Hedda Than Hedda. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/theater/reviews/in-robot-world- she-turns-more-hedda-than-hedda.html Date Accessed: 13/04/2020. • Brown, S. 2011. Theater Review: The Freakily Immersive Experience of Sleep No More. Retrieved from https://www.vulture.com/2011/04/theater_review_the_freakily_im.html Date Accessed: 15/10/2019. • Chandler, D. 1997. An Introduction to Genre Theory. Retrieved from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html Date Accessed: 08/03/2019. • Comtois, J. 2014. “More Things In Heaven And Earth: The rise of science fiction in indie theatre” Retrieved from http://www.nyitawards.com/news/newsitem.asp?storyid=378 Date accessed: 27/11/2018 • Costa, M. 2011, January 18th. ‘Frankenstein: Man or monster?’ The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jan/17/a-monster- role-frankenstein-danny-boyle Date Accessed: 27/01/2019. • Ebert, R. 1976. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” review. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rocky-horror-picture-show-1976 Date accessed: 28/11/2018 • Foley, T. 2017. Sci-fi Theatre: Why it’s time to embrace the weird. Retrieved from http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/sci-fi-theatre-time-embrace-weird/ Date Accessed: 28/10/2019.

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• Gannon, M. 2012. 'Jurassic Park' May Be Impossible, But Dino DNA Lasts Longer Than Thought. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/23861-fossil-dna- half-life.html Date Accessed: 08/06/2021. • Ganzel, B. 2007. Farming in the 1950s and 60s – Television. Retrieved from https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_17.html Date Accessed: 06/08/2020. • Gunderson, L. 2012. ‘Theater’s Audiences Are Mostly Female: Why Not the Roles?’ Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/theatres-audiences- are-ma_b_1388150 Date Accessed: 18/09/2019. • Holt, R. 1922, July - December. ‘Plays Tender and Tough’. The Forum. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/forum03leacgoog/forum03leacgoog_djvu.txt Date Accessed: 24/01/2019. • Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Vol, 24.2. 2013. • Khoh, L. 2018, September 14th. ‘@lantis A Dark World by Thought Jar Productions’. Perth Walkabout. Retrieved from https://www.perthwalkabout.com/arts-culture/atlantis-episode-four-a-dark- world-by-thought-jar-productions Date Accessed: 23/11/2020. • Khoh, L. 2018, September 22nd. ‘@lantis The Year of the Long Tail by Thought Jar Productions’. Perth Walkabout. Retrieved from https://www.perthwalkabout.com/arts-culture/alantis-episode-five-the-year- of-the-long-tail-by-thought-jar-productions Date Accessed: 23/11/2020. • Le Guin, U. 2009, August 29th. ‘The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.’ The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of- flood Date Accessed: 31/01/2019. • Nevins, J. 2011. Alchemists, Astronomers, and Wild Men: A History of the Mad Scientist. Retrieved from https://io9.gizmodo.com/alchemists-astronomers- and-wild-men-a-history-of-the-5805477?IR=T Date Accessed: 24/10/2019. • Nevins, J. 2011. Organ Theft and the Insanity of Geniuses: A History of Mad Scientists in the Industrial Age. Retrieved from https://io9.gizmodo.com/organ- theft-and-the-insanity-of-geniuses-a-history-of-30813602?IR=T Date Accessed: 24/10/2019.

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Artwork

• Bell, A. 2018. Ghosts of @lantis Past, Present, and Future. Perth, WA. • Bell, A. 2018. Oscar Wilde. Perth, WA. • De Cruz, L. 2018. Bugsy. Perth, WA. • Snell, A. 2018. The Hybrid. Perth, WA. • Snell, A. 2018. Jules, IRIS, and Mary in Ponderlust Labs. Perth, WA.

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• Snell, A. 2018. Lug. Perth, WA. • Snell, A. 2018. @lantis Election Posters. Perth, WA.

Comic Books and Graphic Novels

• Bates, H. Astounding Stories of Super-Science. January 1930. New York: Publisher’s Fiscal Corporation. • Gernsback, H. Amazing Stories. April 1926. New York: Experimenter Publishing.

Filmography

• Adamson, Al. 1971. Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Distributed by Independent- International Pictures. • Arnold, Jack. 1954. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Branagh, Kenneth. 1994. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Distributed by TriStar Pictures. • Brooks, Mel. 1974. Young Frankenstein. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Brooks, Mel. 1987. Spaceballs. Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. • Cameron, James. 1986. Aliens. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Cameron, James. 2009. Avatar. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Capra, F. 1946. It’s a Wonderful Life. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. • Carpenter, John. 1982. John Carpenter’s The Thing. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Cuaron, Alfonso. 2006. Children of Men. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Jonze, Spike. 2013. Her. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. • Kershner, Ivan. 1980. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Kubrick, Stenley. 1968. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. • Lang, Fritz. 1927. Metropolis. Distributed by Parufament. • Lucas, George. 1977. Star Wars. Distributed by 20th Century Fox.

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• Marquand, Richard. 1983. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Melies, George. 1902. La Voyage dans la Lune. Distributed by Star Film Company. • Melies, George. 1904. Voyage á travers L’Impossible. Distributed by Star Film Company. • Neill, Roy. 1943. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Nolan, Christopher. 2010. Inception. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. • Nyby, Christian. 1951. The Thing from Another World. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. • Scott, Ridley. 1979. Alien. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Scott, Ridley. 1982. Blade Runner. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. • Scott, Ridley. 2012. Prometheus. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Scott, Ridley. 2015. The Martian. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Schaffner, Franklin. 1968. Planet of the Apes. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Sharman, Jim. 1975. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. • Spielberg, Steven. 2001. A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures & DreamWorks Pictures. • Spielberg, Steven. 1977. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Distributed by Columbia Pictures. • Spielberg, Steven. 1982. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Spielberg, Steven. 1993. Jurassic Park. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Spielberg, Steven. 2002. Minority Report. Distributed by 20th Century Fox & DreamWorks Pictures. • Spielberg, Steven. 2005. War of the Worlds. Distributed by Paramount Pictures & DreamWorks Pictures. • Steers, Burr. 2016. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Distributed by Lionsgate & Sony Pictures Releasing. • Villeneuve, Denis. 2021. Dune. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

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• Wachowski, Lana & Wachowski, Lilly. 1999. The Matrix. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures & Roadshow Entertainment. • Whale, James. 1931. Frankenstein. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Whedon, J. 2005. Serenity. Distributed by Universal Pictures. • Wilcox, Fred. 1956. Forbidden Planet. Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. • Zemeckis, Robert. 1985. Back to the Future. Distributed by Universal Pictures.

Games (Board & Tabletop)

• Downing, T, et al. Red Dwarf – The Roleplaying Game. Seattle: Deep7. 2003. Roleplaying Game.

Games (Electronic, Interactive & Video)

• Atari, Inc. Asteroids. Atari, Inc. Arcade. 1979. • BioWare. Mass Effect. Microsoft Game Studios. X Box 360. 2007. • Taito. Space Invaders. Atari, Inc. Arcade. 1978.

Literature

• Adams, D. 1979. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. London: Pan Books. • Atwood, M. 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. • Atwood, M. 2009. The Year of the Flood. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. • Austen, J. 1813. Pride and Prejudice. Whitehall: T. Egerton. • Austen, J & Grahame-Smith, S. 2009. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Philadelphia: Quirk Books. • Baxter, S & Pratchett, T. 2012. The Long Earth. New York: Doubleday • Bradbury, R. 1953. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books. • Campbell, J. 1938. Who Goes There? New York: Analog Science Fiction and Fact. • Christie, A. 1920-1975. Poirot series. London: The Bodley Head & London: Penguin Books. • Dickens, C. 1843. A Christmas Carol. London: Chapman & Hall.

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• Egan, G. 2002. Schild’s Ladder. London: Gollancz. • Graham, C. 1987-2004. Chief Inspector Barnaby series. London: Century. • Grant, R & Naylor, D. 1991. Red Dwarf: Better Than Life. London: Penguin Books. • Grant, R & Naylor, D. 1989. Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. London: Penguin Books. • Grant, R & Naylor, D. 1990. Better Than Life. London: Penguin Books. • Herbert, F. 1965. Dune. Boston: Chilton Books. • Holmsten, B & Lubertozzi, A. 2001. The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars’ Invasion of Earth from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles. Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc. • Horne, R. 1850. The Poor Artist; or, Seven Eye-sights and One Object. Sacramento: Creative Media Partners, LLC. • Huxley, A. 1932. Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus. • More, T. 1516. Utopia. Leuven: Thomas More. • Orwell, G. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker and Warburg. • Shelley, M. 1818. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones. • Verne, J. 1864. Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel. • Verne, J. 1873. Around the World in Eighty Days. Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel. • Wells, H. 1898. The War of the Worlds. London: Heinemann. • Wilde, O. 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Philadelphia: Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. • Wilson, W. 1851. A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Online Video Content

• Alan Ayckbourn hopes sci-fi will attract a younger audience. 2017. BBC. Available at https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/40895633/alan- ayckbourn-hopes-sci-fi-will-attract-a-younger-audience Date Accessed: 08/04/2020.

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• Terry Pratchett: Science Fiction or Fantasy? Mark Lawson Talks to Terry Pratchett – BBC Studios. Youtube video, added by BBC Studios. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6bKfu_JGDg Date assessed: 15/05/2021. • This Sci-Fi Stage Show Blew Our Minds! 2014. Youtube video, added by DweebCast. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URsW0CM4R5A Date Accessed: 15/11/2019.

Photographic Images

• Leitch, C. 2018. Dean Lovatt as James Bedford & Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Max Rankin as Senior Technician Harrison 'Harry' Kinvig. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Murray Jackson as Prof. Jules Quine. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Nic Doig as Deputy Technician Lug. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Nicola Brescianini as Capt. Dorothy Goddard. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Tegan Mulvany as Dr. Mary Pote. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions. • Leitch, C. 2018. Xarna Rappold as IRIS. [Photograph]. Thought Jar Productions.

Radio Shows, Audio Dramas & Concept Albums

• Adams, D & Lloyd, J. 1978. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Produced by BBC Radio 4. • Grant, R & Naylor, D. 1983. Son of Cliché. Produced by BBC Radio 4. • Koch, H. 1938. War of the Worlds. CBS Radio. Produced by John Houseman & Orson Welles. • Lee, E. 2010. Starstruck. Audible. Produced by The AudioComics Company. • Platt, S. 2020. @lantis: Self Isolation. Perth: Thought Jar Productions.

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• Wakeman, R. 1974. Journey to the Centre of the Earth. London: Rick Wakeman & A&M Records. • Wayne, J. 1978. Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. London: Jeff Wayne & Sony Music Entertainment.

Stage Shows, Play Scripts, & Live Performances

• Adamczak, S. 2017. Stasis. Perth: Weeping Spoon Productions. • Adamczak, S. 2019. Captain Spaceship. Perth: Weeping Spoon Productions. • Anthoney, P. 2019. Mission Creep. London: Controlled Chaos UK. • Ayckbourn, A. 1998. Comic Potential. Scarborough: Stephen Joseph Theatre. • Ayckbourn, A. 1994. Communicating Doors. Scarborough: Stephen Joseph Theatre. • Ayckbourn, A. 1987. Henceforward… Scarborough: Stephen Joseph Theatre. • Barrett, F & Doyle, M. 2011. Sleep No More. New York: Punchdrunk. • Baynes, J. 2018. A Mind Transcendent. Perth: Hand in Hand Theatre. • Behn, A. 1687. The Emperor of the Moon. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. • Bowie, D & Walsh, E. 2015. Lazarus. New York: NY Theatre Workshop. • Bradbury, R. 1955. Fahrenheit 451. Unpublished. • Brain, T. 2016. The Mummy Rises. Perth: From the Hip Productions. • Brooks, M, & Meehan, T. 2007. Young Frankenstein. Seattle: The R/F/B/V Group. • Browne, M & Nichols, R. 1928. Wings over Europe. New York: Covici-Friede. • Capek, K & Selver, P. 1923. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). New York: Doubleday. • Carding, E. 2019. Quintessence. London: TALOS Festival. • Carlton, B. 1985. Return to the Forbidden Planet. London: Bubble Theatre Company. • Champlin, C. 1932. The House of Doom. New York: Theatre Masque. • Chekov, A. 1900. Three Sisters. Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre. • Churchill, C. 2002. A Number. London: Royal Court Theatre. • Courtis, S. 2016. 2084. Murdoch: Murdoch University.

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• Crewes, A. 2017. Know Your Enemy. Perth: The Actors Hub. • Dear, N. 2011. Frankenstein. London: Royal National Theatre. • Doulton, L. 2019. We Sing, I Sang. London: TALOS Festival. • Farber, Y. 2017. Salomé. London: Royal National Theatre. • Fitchett, R. 2019. Room Service. London: TALOS Festival. • Foley, T. 2017. Astronauts of Hartlepool. London: Vault Festival. • Goldman, J. 2017. Follies. London: Royal National Theatre. • Griffin, S & Hudson, D. 2013. Drunk Shakespeare. New York: Brass Jar Productions. • Guyenette, C. 2019. Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience. London: Ellipsis Entertainment Ltd. • Haley, J. 2013. The Nether. Los Angeles: Centre Theatre Group. • Haydn, J. 1777. The World of the Moon. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. • Hirata, O. 2012. Three Sisters: Android Version. Tokyo: Seinendan Theater Company. • Hobart, G, Nicholson, L & Willard, J. 1920. The Blue Flame. New York: Albert H. Woods. • Hutton, P. 2017. Cosmic Bottle. Murdoch: Murdoch University. • Ibsen, H. 1891. Hedda Gabler. Munich: Königliches Residenz-Theater. • Icke, R & MacMillan, D. 2013. 1984. Oxford: Headlong. • King, J. 2016. Dracula. Perth: Murdoch Theatre Company. • King, J. 2015. War of the Worlds. Murdoch: Murdoch University. • Kressly, L. 2019. RawTransport™. London: Electrick Village. • Klysz, L & Ensemble. 2018. Frankie’s. Perth: Variegated Productions. • Lee, E., Lee, S & Place, D. 1985. Starstruck: A Space Opera. New York: Broadway Play Publishing. • Livhaber, N. 2019. I Will Tell You In A Minute. London: TALOS Festival. • Lockwood, D. 2017. The Perilous Adventures of the Postman. Curtin University: STAGE ONE. • Luhrmann, B & Pearce, C. 2014 Strictly Ballroom the Musical. Sydney: Global Creatures, Bazmark.

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• Lui, J. 2018. The Desecration of Your Mum. Perth: Murdoch University. • Mackie, L. 2015. Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens. Perth: Black Yak Theatre. • Malloy, D. 2016. Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. New York: Imperial Theatre. • Marlow, C. 1592. Doctor Faustus. London: Thomas Law. • McArdle, S. 2015. Between Solar Systems. Perth: Second Chance Theatre. • McArdle, S. 2013. Coincidences at the End of Time. Perth: Second Chance Theatre. • McArdle, S. 2016. Frankenstein. Perth: Second Chance Theatre. • McArdle, S. 2017. Laika. Perth: Second Chance Theatre. • McDowall, A. 2016. X. London: Royal Court Theatre. • Meriwether, E. 2008. Heddatron: A Play. New York: Les Freres Corbusier. • Messenger, J. 2015. Multiverse Theory in D. Perth: The Blue Room Theatre. • Mitchell, A. 2018. Hadestown. London: Royal National Theatre. • O’Brien, R. 1973. The Rocky Horror Show. London: Royal Court Theatre. • Offenbach, J. 1881. Tales of Hoffman. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc. • Oliver, R. 1925. Night Hawk. New York: Bijou Theatre. • Peake, R. 1823. Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. London: English Opera House. • Platt, S. 2015. Thaw: A Science Fiction Play. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 1: Fish Out of Water. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 2: Data Protection. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 3: Timeshare. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 4: A Dark World. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 5: The Year of the Long Tail. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 6: Good Night, and Good Lug. Perth: Thought Jar Productions. • Platt, S. 2018. @lantis Episode 7: It’s a Wonderful Mind. Perth: Thought Jar Productions.

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• Rado, J & Ragni, G. 1967. Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. Ney York: Biltmore Theatre. • Ridley, P. 2005. Mercury Fur. Plymouth: Drum Theatre. • Rogers, M. 2016. The Honeycomb Trilogy. New York: Samuel French. • Schutte, K. 2019. One Woman Alien. London: Cast Iron Theatre. • Shadwell, T. 1676. The Virtuoso. London: The Duke’s Company. • Shaffer, P. 2017. Amadeus. London: Royal National Theatre. • Shakespeare, W. 1606. Macbeth. London: Edward Blount, Isaac Jaggard & William Jaggard. • Shakespeare, W. 1597. Romeo & Juliet. London: Edward Blount, Isaac Jaggard & William Jaggard. • Shakespeare, W. 1611. The Tempest. London: Edward Blount & Isaac Jaggard. • Shakespeare, W. 1602. Twelfth Night. London: Edward Blount, Isaac Jaggard & William Jaggard. • Shaw, G. 1922. Back to Methuselah. London: Penguin Classics. • Shaw, G. 1948. Farfetched Fables. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. • Sullivan, T. 1887. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. • Travers, M. 2015. MotET’s The War of the Worlds. Perth: MotET & The Perth Cultural Centre. • Walton, T. 2009. Trees in Space. Murdoch: Murdoch University. • Washburn, A. 2012. Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play. Washington, D.C.: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. • Wayne, J. 2006. Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds – Live on Stage. London: Jeff Wayne & Sony Music Entertainment. • Wayne, J. 2012. Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds – The New Generation. London: Jeff Wayne & Sony Music Entertainment.

Television Shows and Streaming Content

• A Conversation with Ray Bradbury. 2001. UCTV. Produced by Point Loma Nazarene University.

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• Agatha Christie’s Poirot. 1989. LWT. Produced by Brian Eastman. • Blackadder. 1983. BBC. Produced by John Lloyd. • Doctor Who. 1963. BBC. Produced by Verity Lambert. • Family Guy. 1999. Fox. Produced by Seth MacFarlane. • Firefly. 2002. Fox. Produced by Ben Edlund. • Frasier. 1993. NBC. Produced by Maggie Blanc. • Futurama. 1999. Fox. Produced by Claudia Katz. • House. 2004. Fox. Produced by Marcy G. Kaplan. • M*A*S*H. 1972. CBS. Produced by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds. • Midsomer Murders. 1997. ITV. Produced by Betty Willingale. • Mystery Science Theater 3000. 1988. KTMA-TV. Produced by Joel Hodgson & Jim Mallon. • National Theatre Live. 2009. Royal National Theatre. Produced by Emma Keith. • Red Dwarf. 1988. BBC. Produced by Ed Bye. • Rick and Morty. 2013. Adult Swim. Produced by J. Michael Mendel. • Science Fiction Theatre. 1955. Ziv Television Programs INC. Produced by Ivan Tors. • Seinfeld. 1989. NBC. Produced by Larry David. • Space: 1999. 1975. ITV/RAI. Produced by Sylvia Anderson. • Star Trek. 1966. NBC. Produced by Gene Roddenberry. • Stingray. 1964. ATV. Produced by Gerry Anderson. • The Handmaid’s Tale. 2017. Hulu. Produced by Margaret Atwood & Elisabeth Moss. • The Jetsons. 1962. ABC (American Broadcasting Company). Produced by William Hanna & Joseph Barbera. • The Orville. 2017. Fox. Produced by Brannon Braga, Jason Clark, David A. Goodman, and Seth MacFarlane. • The Simpsons. 1989. Fox. Produced by James L. Brookes and Matt Groening. • The Twilight Zone. 1959. CBS. Produced by Buck Houghton and Rod Sterling. • The War of the Worlds. 2019. BBC. Produced by Betsan Morris Evans. • Westworld. 2016. HBO. Produced by Cherylanne Martin, Michael Polaire, Stephen Semel & Carly Wray.

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Websites

• Google Books Ngram Viewer. 2019. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=science+fiction%2Cspeculati ve+fiction%2Cscientific+romance%2Cvoyages+extraordinaires&year_start=185 0&year_end=1930&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csc ience%20fiction%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cspeculative%20fiction%3B%2Cc0%3B .t1%3B%2Cscientific%20romance%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cvoyages%20extraor dinaires%3B%2Cc0 Date Accessed: 22/02/2019. • Internet Broadway Database. 2018. Retrieved from https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-rocky-horror-show-3732 Date Accessed: 27/11/2018. • Internet Movie Database. 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/find?q=frankenstein&s=tt&ttype=ft&ref_=fn_ft Date Accessed: 06/03/2019. • Rocky Horror Australia. 2015. Retrieved from http://www.ozrockyhorror.com/OZ%20stage%20productions.html Date Accessed: 27/11/2018. • Science Diction: The Origin Of The Word 'Robot'. 2011. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of- the-word-robot Date Accessed: 10/12/2018.

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